


The Return of Tony Stark: A New Marvels Adventure

by navaan



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Noir
Genre: Action/Adventure, Camelot, Comic Book Science, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, Getting Together, Identity Porn, Inspired by Fanart, M/M, Magic, Man Out of Time, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 10:39:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 37,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19083355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: Tony Stark follows a lead from a mysterious notebook. It's the beginning of a strange Odyssey. In 2019 Steve Rogers is Captain America and also a great fan of Marvels. At a special anniversary exhibition he stumbles over a strange artifact and can't help but wonder. Little does he know, that it's a sign of things to come.





	1. In Search of Doom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jayjayverse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayjayverse/gifts).



> This story was written for the 2019 Cap-Iron Man Reverse Bang, inspired by the amazing art [**Iron man: The first avenger**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19083937) (0 words) by [**jayjayverse**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayjayverse). I had a blast brainstorming this together and writing this for you! Thank you so much for the inspiring art and the ideas and input. 
> 
> There's a second, wonderful story for the art here that you should check out here: [**These Cuts I Have, They Need Love To Heal**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19076920) (25018 words) by [**Shadowolf19**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowolf19)
> 
> Obviously this story fuses Noir with part of Doom Quest (Iron Man V. 1 #149-#150) and their subsequent Camelot related "adventures" and plays with Avengers V.1 #4 and the Cap background in the MCU.
> 
> A big shout out thank you to,[ Lets_call_me_Lily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lets_call_me_Lily/pseuds/Lets_call_me_Lily) ,for beta &, advise and cheerleading. All remaining (or newly added ^^;) mistakes are mine, of course.

“How long till we arrive at the drop off zone?” Tony Stark shouted over the loud groans of powerful 42-cylinder Tornado engine and propellers. The new plane was in many ways his current pride and joy, but he had ceded the captain's chair to Jim without regret to work on the Iron Man suit with Jarvis. He knew Jarvis wanted to give him another check-up before he stepped into the suit again — and so far he had successfully managed to steer any conversation with his mentor away from the topic.

Tenacious in his worry for Tony's well being as he was for his work, Jarvis wouldn't allow Tony to sidestep the issue for much longer though. Tony knew him well enough, and had enough first-hand experience to back that knowledge up, to realize he was almost due a thorough inspection.

But his heart was fine. It had never been better since the near-fatal plane crash at the age of twenty, which had put him — the young man who, having been declared an emancipated minor, had come into his full inheritance as head of the late Howard Stark's fortune and business — on a path that perhaps he'd always been yearning for. With a failing heart, sitting behind a desk and waiting for the inevitable had seemed like a waste of time. His engineering inventions gave his company more than enough to earn money without his overbearing presence. Thus Tony Stark, in search for a cure to his own mortality, perhaps searching for a reason to outlive his misfortune, had become who he was today: Tony Stark, hero of Marvels, hero of the Tony Stark adventure novels and known adventurer.

Only the people closest to him knew that it had been his failing heart that drove him to seek out mysteries promising a cure, or better technology with which to fix himself.

He'd finally found it. And while Tony kept telling his extended family that the Orichalcum had fixed his heart for good.

The concerns that were foremost on his mind these days were of a different, if no less personal nature.

War was tearing the world apart — and Iron Man was needed as a fighter and saboteur on the sprawling battlefield more than the daring explorer Tony Stark. Yet all the uncovered threats led directly back to Tony’s origins. Hydra, Strucker, Zemo, Howard Stark, a secret soldier calling himself the Red Skull, even a treacherous ex-lover who was now known as Hydra's leading lady, Madame Masque — familiar names kept cropping up in the secret files General Fury was handing him. They were at war, but to Tony all of it was personal.

And now _this_.

The leathery notebook was heavy in his hands. He had studied it for hours trying to decipher the words of an unravelling mind and separate what could be real from what were just mad musings. There was no doubt in Tony’s mind that this was his father’s hand, and from what Tony gathered, the notebook had been filled just before the untimely ‘death’ of war veteran Howard Stark. Which only after his more dangerous brushes with HYDRA he’d learned hadn't been death at all, but a transformation; from the capable engineer and inventor who loved his country and, despite the preoccupied distraction that had marked their brief relationship, had loved his son, into a deranged genius in the service of Hydra. Baron Zemo had been Howard Stark only because they shared the same body. Leaving Tony to contemplate the recently surfaced notes — had they been written by Howard or Zemo?

Tony had spent the last night going through all 74 pages of scribbled notes and sketches. Some were utter nonsense, some illegible. The rest of the pages gave Tony pause, though.

To this day, most of his critics called the _Terror of Fin Fang Foom_ the “least imaginative of the Tony Stark novels”. Drivel, even, some house writers of Marvels had called it to his face. — and yet it remained one of his best selling stories on the stands. Readers were still sending in letters about how much they enjoyed it.

It was hard to tell how many of them loved them as novels or how many of them even suspected that it was a true story that had only been dressed up a little. His chronicler, Virgil, had changed facts to make Tony look larger than life and hide all signs of his failing health, as well as disguise the true workings of the devices he used.

Only a handful of people — all of them on this plane — knew about the jade dragon statue he kept in a safe in his New York office, hidden behind a picture of his mother.

He knew that some of his notes about the Orichalcum, or extraterrestrial beings, or jade masks hidden in jungles, would look crazy to someone who hadn't walked the path he had. He'd found legendary treasures other people didn't dare dream of, and had seen things that most thought were impossible.

Tony glanced back at the page where an unsteady hand had drawn a sword and written out incredible-seeming assumptions on the metal density and properties. Welsh was scribbled beneath it, alongside the word _CAMELOT_ spelled out in capital letters and underlined twice with the question, “Key to power?”

“Tony? You really plan on going alone?”

He snapped the notebook shut to look at Pepper. The redhead had become his trusted companion, a reliable partner on his adventures, more involved then poor Virgil had ever been. Biting his lip at the thought of his old friend, Tony held out the notebook.

“Yes,” he said, “and I want you to hold on to this.”

“The book? You're sure? Won't you need it?”

Studying his face as she was, Tony felt she could see right through him. And didn't he owe her the truth? Wasn't she his chronicler and the person who told his stories as best as she could?

“I went through it. I know all the parts that matter by heart. And after what happened in London, don't you think it's better I don't have it on me?”

Her face turned grim. “You don't think it was an accident?”

“That someone killed the soldier Nick sent to keep us safe? Or that someone broke into our hotel room and rifled through all our belongings not two days after someone sent this to us?”

Pepper sighed. “I had hoped that just this once, it might be coincidence. I'm too much of a journalist to believe it.”

“You have good instincts, Pepper. Always trust your instincts. Someone wants me on this quest and someone wants this book. That's why I want you to take it. Don't give it to Fury, don't give it to anyone. We'll pretend it's with me. Lock it away. Keep it safe.”

“You think Hydra is luring you in?” Her voice rose to make herself heard over the sudden roar of the engine and the plane’s shaking.

“Sorry boss, we're hitting some bad weather,” Jim Rhodes shouted back towards them; Tony could barely make out his words, but did catch their meaning. The sky outside had darkened, clouds promising heavy rain.

“We'll be there soon anyway,” he shouted. “I'll get out and fly the rest of the way.”

Jarvis turned to him from the seat of the co-pilot to frown. “Not before I get a final look at that heart of yours!”

“You knew that was coming,” Pepper said, barely loud enough for him to hear over all the noise. “He worries about you more than ever before.”

He knew, and had anticipated the demand. “Jarvis, don't call it the _final_ look”, Tony shouted and rolled his eyes so that only Pepper could see it. “Bad luck.”

“The way you're taking risks, it just might be,” Jarvis huffed.

“Don't say that,” Pepper reprimanded, fixing Tony with a stern and sad look. “He would never forgive himself. None of us would.”

He wasn’t sentimental by nature and despite all he had seen, superstition had no place in his life, but a sense of foreboding had settled over him. Perhaps he'd been carrying it since the notebook had found its way to him as the final piece of Howard’s legacy. Nothing about this was accidental; nothing about it was all that different from looking for the mythical treasures of Atlantis, and damn, it wasn't any different than going on the other missions Fury had laid on him. So why was he feeling on edge?

“There's a war on,” Tony reminded Pepper and gave her a one armed hug, holding both of them steady by grabbing the harness that was holding the armor upright. “We need to keep our heads up and eyes to the future. The moment we stop believe there's a future after this hell, they've won. We can't let them win. No matter what. Promise me that.”

“Promise me,” she replied, “that you won't make me the writer of the last Tony Stark adventure.”

“I won't make you,” he said with a crooked smile, then continued with a note of cheer: “You could use all the notes you made during our time in Latveria — and think of all the things you can write after the war!”

Her fist connected with his shoulder with surprising force. “Don't you dare die, Tony, I’m warning you! I will write the most embarrassing and ludicrous end for you that I can imagine. You don't want that.”

“Alright, lady, you've got yourself a deal,” he said. “I won't die to make sure you're not the last one to write a Tony Stark adventure. I'll be back in no time with a story to tell and more of an idea if this is worth pursuing further or not.”

“What if it's a trap?”

“Then you and Jim and Jarvis will have my back — and the book will be safely stored away.”

He hugged Pepper a little tighter before he let her go.

“You're right,” she agreed, “everyone's nerves are frayed. We're used to walking into danger, but looking over my shoulder constantly to make sure Hydra hasn’t turned another friends into an enemy… It’s getting to me.”

He knew the feeling. Every time he looked over his shoulder, he feared a Hydra agent was there about to stick a syringe into his neck to turn him into the next Zemo. “I know. After this, let's take a break.”

 _That_ finally made her chuckle with honest amusement. “That sounds nice. What's a vacation for you? North pole expedition? Seeking the fabled Wakanda?”

“Tried that before. Oh, don't tempt me, Ms. Potts.”

“Wakanda? We failed at that miserably last time.” Jim shouted over the noise. “I'm throwing you out over Wales, Tony, but if you'd rather go looking for Wakanda, I'll turn this thing around.”

“Let's put a pin in it Jim. After all, it's not only Iron Man who's needed.” Tony patted Pepper on the back, realizing that she still looked more nervous than he was used to seeing her. Then he stepped away from her and walked towards the cockpit. “War Machine has orders too, Colonel Rhodes.”

It was still strange to see Jim in uniform. For years the man had been his friend and companion and now he had joined the ranks of Fury's Howling Commandos, doing his part in this war like the unseen hero he'd always been. Tony patted him on the back too for good measure, then looked at Jarvis.

“I'll be back before you know it. Then you can fiddle with the mechanical heart and —“

Looking like a volcano that was about to erupt, Jarvis growled, “Is it charged?”

He was talking about the heart, not Iron Man, but both ran on the same new power core based on the Orichalcum. Running out of power was no longer a concern.

“100 percent, I promise.”

“Then get out and remember your call-sign, Iron Man. I'll expect to hear from you at 0100 every night.”

Tony let his hand rest on the shoulder of the man who had essentially brought him up and squeezed. Then Jarvis got up. Despite his gruff words, he wasn't going to let Tony step into the Iron Man without help. It was a ritual, one of the small repetitive tasks that Jarvis had once told a much younger Tony were what got you through the day on a battlefield. The magic of routine, he had called it.

Understanding the need, Tony let him run through the motions.

“Systems online,” the voice of Iron Man's control mechanism announced. “Power at 100%”

It was a sophisticated mathematical machine that would warn him when power was seriously depleted. One day, Tony hoped, it would be able to take over part of the navigation.

Finally, satisfied that Iron Man was working at peak capacity, he stepped out of the way and helped Tony inside, helped him strap the parts in place, and lowered the harness until Iron Man stood on his own feet.

“We're over the drop point,” Jim announced.

No more time, he wanted to say, for long goodbyes. Pepper nodded and stepped away, fastening herself to a seat on the side, while Jarvis secured himself by the hatch to open it for him.

With a hiss of hydraulics, Tony gave a final salute to his friends — and stepped out to let Iron Man drop like a stone. The first exhilarating seconds of free fall were always scary. The heavy armor groaned, hurtling downwards like a clunky rag doll, its heavy limbs uncontrollable.

Then Tony opened the shutes with a press of a button. Over the last few years they had enhanced the armor's design and flight no longer drained the power, but the turbine made enough noise to give away his location. Right now, sailing down with the help of a number of small parachutes might make the difference between stealth and discovery. He let himself drift a bit, saw the treeline get closer. The armor gave a sudden beep. “Power at 100%. Impact imminent,” the scratchy voice of the system informed him. Initially giving it a voice had been a bit of a joke. By now Tony thought of it more as a companion that he was upgrading with every bit of new tech that became available.

His heart no longer needed the inventor’s focus — but the Iron Man would never be finished.

A small warning light kept blinking and Tony finally released the parachutes so he could fall down the rest of the way before the fabric could get caught in the branches. With the armor’s weight he crashed through the trees without a problem, twigs and leaves coming down with him. He barely felt the impact. 

The joints whined, but the Iron Man landed on his feet, catching himself on one knee.

Tony took a moment to assess the situation. The jet had long circled around, making its way back to base and leading any followers that might have been on their trail astray. If everything had gone well, the weather should’ve hidden the falling metal projectile from inquisitive eyes.

So far, so good.

There was nobody around, , or at least, nobody visible.

The rain was drumming through the foliage and against the metal of his suit.

“Better get ready for an uncomfortable night,” Tony said to himself. He stayed in the armor, because he had decided long before that he would trek to the first spot indicated on the map before he'd make camp.

That Nazi spies were out here in the middle of the Welsh countryside seemed unlikely at best when you at here in the rain, but if there _was_ something to find here then _someone_ beside Tony would be out looking for it. Whether the people looking were spies, allies or just opportunists after personal gains didn't matter. When there was a chance to find glory, and maybe even actual power, dangerous people could be counted on turning up.

He pushed through the shrubbery, pushing towards the cave that the map had indicated with a fresh blue ink cross. The inscription had read, “Merlin's resting place.”

It sounded like a story taken right from a fairytale, but so many of Tony's adventures had started with a legend or fairytale.

The truth underneath was what he wanted to find.

Walking a huge distance in the armor was a lot faster than walking on foot, but moving around a suit that weighed more than a tank still took strength and skill. Tony had worked on the weight. He had used new alloys, experimented with a rare metal, vibranium, that allowed for thinner plating. Sadly, he hadn’t gotten his hands on enough to use it for the whole suit, but he had also uncovered a chunk of meteor in an old tomb that all scriptures claimed held the remains of a Norse god. Tony had never found the remains themselves, nor had he ascertained to whom they were meant to belong, but he had found an axe and coarse metal chunks littered around the empty sarcophagus. 

Some of that metal was now part of his armor, protecting him, helping him fly faster.

Yes, he preferred flying, but he knew that the sky was constantly surveilled for enemy planes and he didn’t want to be spotted. 

He only wanted to see if there was anything to this whole mystery or if it was a trap.

Excalibur. Camelot.

All of that seemed a little too magical — even for Tony. But that was what most people had told him about Atlantis — and where would he be now without Atlantean metal.

He tracked through the shrubbery for another two kilometers before he found one of the landmarks he’d been looking for. A huge rock formation loomed out of the woods, a half day’s walk away from the Merlin’s supposed last resting place. 

Tony had deliberately decided to start his search there and not at the main sights that had been featured more prominently in the notebook. He wanted to investigate whether there was anything to it: markings, clues, signs of prehistoric settlements. He knew enough about the Celts to know that much about them was unknown, so he wondered if there was anything to be found.

Without clues, he would have to move on — and the closer he went to the ruins that had been marked out as the main point of interest, the more likely that someone was going to be there already.

The rock formation looked unspectacular at first glance. Tony immediately wondered if he had come all this way for what he could find on a hike in any European forest. Awkwardly, because it was still raining, he climbed out of the armor and pulled out his bag of supplies and equipment. He’d brought a coat for the rainy weather and he slipped it on before he set the Iron Man’s hand repulsor to illuminate the rocks. He wanted to see what he was looking at. 

He squelched over to the formation. Was there any hint that this was a grave or had been used for religious purposes? 

All he could see was a ragged rock waiting to be climbed by daring school boys. There were no signs of it being man-made. 

Tony let his hand glide along the wet stone. What was it the notes had said? Some of it had been so cryptic that it was hard to remember. But they had definitely mentioned that there was a small cave here “used by priests.” There had been no elaboration on what the priests had used it for.

As Tony stepped slowly around the corner, the Iron Man took a step to follow, splashing its way through the mud.

Even in this bleak weather, Tony found it in himself to grin in satisfaction. “That works,” he muttered over his shoulder and watched the armor walk towards him in slow measured steps.

He’d had so many encounters with Hydra’s Zemo-Stark designed drones — remote controlled by a simple system of radio waves — that he had decided to take one apart and see how their technology could be improved upon. His own system in the Iron Man was much more sophisticated, and he didn’t have to rely on the simple remote controls Strucker and his new Zemo were using to give the machines commands. It would be much too dangerous to have the Iron Man remote controlled by an enemy.

To achieve the Iron Man’s autonomy, he had worked on microcircuits that would revolutionize the fields of science and technology when Tony had time to expand on them after the war.

For now, he was happy enough to watch the armor take another step through a puddle, holding up a hand to light his way. “My trusted companion,” he joked, but he still couldn’t see an entrance of cave. Not even a hole.

No inscriptions either.

Had people ever prayed here? To nature sprites, the moon and stars?

There might simply be nothing left of that. 

But as he looked along the side of the rocks, something shimmered. At first he thought it was his mind playing tricks — fooled by the white unnatural repulsor light broken by the heavy raindrops. Then he saw it again. At a point close to the rocks where the surface looked ragged and solid, a breeze blew the raindrops against the strone and for a second it seemed like the water was swallowed up by shadow, as if the rain was passing into the stone.

He stared, watched it closely for another second and realized that the illusion occured at about three second long intervals. That seemed oddly specific. Man-made.

Something was going on here.

Tony took a step back towards the armor, keeping a hand on its chest plate in case he needed to get in suddenly. With the other he picked up a pebble and threw it at the strange spot where sometimes the rain behaved strangely.

The stone made quiet clicking sounds as it hit a surface — but it was gone.

It had vanished right through the stone.

He had no device to take a reading of the area. Looking up at the armor, he wondered if it was worth getting back in before he did anything, but instead shook his head and stepped towards the area to take a closer look. How lucky that neither Jarvis nor Pepper were here to berate him.

He crouched, then leaned slightly towards the area where the optical disruption was occurring and squinted. From down here he could see something else that made no sense. Perhaps an inch to the left from the area where the pebble had vanished, a line of rain water ran down as if it was moving over a glass surface. There was no surface at all. The little trail of water hung there in the thin air, about two inches away from the stone. He considered it and got up. 

He had to pull himself up by the side of the armor to reach for the equipment inside and switch on the camera. This was strange enough to be recorded. While his friends were happy enough to take his word for even the most outrageous adventure he recounted, the General preferred hard facts.

“Not sure how well this will record,” he said and made the armor bend down with him to point at the impossible raindrops.

He gave it a moment. Then he stood up, the armor mimicking him.

Again, more carefully now, he placed his hand against the cool, uneven rock wall and then walked forward, sliding his fingers along the stone. He hesitated. Not because he was surprised when his hand wandered into a place where he knew, he could _feel_ his hand resting against the stone but there was nothing there. His hand hung in the air, resting against a surface he could feel but not see.

He looked up and down. 

The visible wall was there, but a hole inch behind where he was blocked by the invisible barrier. He pushed, then used both hands to feel for the surface. It was there, but not where he was seeing it.

He took a step back, looked left and right.

“Curious,” he muttered. 

As a man of science, even after years of dealing with the impossible and looking for legendary artifacts that were often said to hold great magical power, he had yet to encounter true magic. Keeping in mind that there should be a scientific explanation for what he was seeing, he decided to look closer at where the rain was falling and moved his hand to the area where the pebble had fallen right through. 

“Looks like someone wants to hide something,” he said, although he wasn’t sure the Iron Man was still recording. He didn’t have room to store vast amounts of material without switching film, and it wasn’t better for the audio recordings. But sometimes talking out loud helped him think.

Iron Man stood beside him like a loyal bodyguard, silently listening. 

“If someone is hiding something,” Tony whispered, “and using camouflage technology of this level, then they got here before us.”

 _Or someone hid something you weren’t supposed to see, Tony_ , Pepper’s voice berated him in his mind.

The smart move would be to suit up and get backup.

But there was no time. If this was Hydra and whatever the scribbled notes had promised _did_ have value to them, then whatever they were after was too dangerous to let it fall into their hands.

Holding his hands forward to catch himself against invisible walls or rock, he stepped forward, seeing his hand vanish right where the pebble had and the other catch on stone. Terrible as it appeared to have his arm end somewhere around the wrist, he wasn’t feeling anything. No shock, no pain, no rockwall. 

“Projection,” he muttered. “Smart.”

He remembered the sketch well enough to realize he had found the entrance to the holy place. Not trusting his eyes, he awkwardly felt around until he was reasonably sure where the gap in the stone was located. It was large enough to allow him through and it would also be big enough for the armor.

He considered that, pondering Iron Man’s hulking shape before deciding not to leave it out in plain sight. He would at least have to take it behind the projected image. 

“Might as well,” he said and grinned up at the emotionless metal mask. It took him a moment to settle the equipment back into the armor so he could easily get in, but then he felt the metal form around himself close. In the beginning, Iron Man had been a necessity, a way to fight back when nothing else worked. More and more, Tony had to admit he loved it. Iron Man was more than a weapon and more than a call-sign. 

Tony was Iron Man.

Using the metal arms to feel out the gap in the stone again, he moved right into it, ducking and angling himself sideways to get the turbine on his back through without damaging it. He found himself standing in a dark passage. It was barely large enough to hold something of Iron Man’s size, but he could move. With the repulsor, he lit up the cave and found that in front of him was a long aisle, natural or manmade, that widened after a few feet.

Even in the armor, he could move further in easily.

But he stopped himself.

“There’s no way a cave can go this deep into that rock,” he muttered. After skirting around it, he had a pretty good idea of the size of the formation. 

That Iron Man could step into it, he could believe. That Iron Man was now walking inside of it was impossible.

He looked back to the gap he’d stepped through, realized the cave was going not just into the rock but _down_. Was the slope steep enough to explain how he could be this far inside already? 

Possible. Not likely. If he had the time, he should find out.

 _If you keep going like this, Tony_ he thought to himself, _you’ll become a serious archeologist one day. You know that wouldn’t please all the people who’ve called you an irresponsible attention seeker for years._

Well, he didn’t need to _share_ his discoveries with any of them. But if there was something interesting here, then Tony wanted to know. If it was enemy technology, then a certain General he knew would also be interested in learning more.

Using the repulsor torchlight, he lit up the cave. The small tunnel ended only feet away. 

He walked right down to the end, turning to make sure there was nothing he was overlooking.

If there was nothing here, then why had someone taken measures to hide the entrance?

And how?

He took a moment to look and listen.

Then he saw it.

On one side of the cave wall, someone had carved a symbol. At first glance it looked like three rays pointing to a spot above it, but looking closer, Tony realized this had been carved over a much older symbol. When he magnified the area he could even see that once there must have been color. Pigments of old paint stuck to the wall, reddish and orange.

There were two scorch marks, one to the left of it and one had turned the wall black at about the rays would meet. 

Tony tried to remember the notes he’d read so often in the last few days. The newly carved symbol was vaguely familiar, though he wasn’t sure if it was a Celtic marking or just signage made by whoever was hiding secrets here. He was sure he had seen a similar drawing in the notebook. Three lines going up, it had claimed, stood for the light Camelot could bring to the world, three flames. 

If he traced the lines of the older symbol with his armored finger he could imagine an iconic representation of a fire, licking up with three tongues. 

He carefully let the metal hand knock against the stone there, half expecting this to be another ruse.

The wall was solid stone.

But behind the tinkling of metal on stone that sounded like bells through the cave, the knock sounded hollow. He tried knocking against the stone in different places.

After a moment, there was no doubt lingering in his mind.

A passage was hidden behind this wall.

“How I love secret doors,” he whispered. Many secret doors had hidden the treasures he’d been looking for. Some had been simple traps.

Tony didn’t hesitate for a moment.

He put two and two together and used the flamethrower at the lowest possible setting. It still filled the cave with a sudden surge of bustling flames, encasing the armor for a few seconds. It would have made a perfect Marvels cover: the Iron Man stepping from the flames.

The wall reacted to the heat immediately, sliding to the side. He heard the click of a lock and the rattling of an old mechanism. The passage was as wide as the cave he was standing in, but before he plunged down he used the repulsor to light it up and see as far as he could.

While he knew with the new armor he could probably break through a tunnel if he needed to, it would cost him a dangerous amount of energy — and it would most likely bring down the whole rock on top of him. He was not keen on trying.

Choosing every step carefully, he started his descent down stairs that were barely wide enough to allow for Iron Man’s bulky boots. It didn’t stop Tony. He knew with a press of a button he would be able to glide over the stairs.

But he held back. Something was telling him that Iron Man should conserve energy. He was going to need it soon.

Expecting a trap or attack, he very carefully stepped into a room at the end of the tunnel.

It was cylindrical, opening into a huge cave to the left that he couldn’t survey at a glance. He would have to go down further. There were signs of human presence — bricks formed a supporting wall to one side. It must have been built ages ago. The plastering previously adorning it had crumbled into dust. In the dim light of the repulsor, Tony could barely make out the remaining blotches of fading color on the left part of the wall. Something that resembled a sword hilt had been painted there, surrounded by water and flames.

Tony stared at it, trying to put the sparse information he’d memorized in order.

Merlin’s tomb.

There would be no hint of Excalibur here, right?

Shouldn’t the sword be in a lake?

“You’re wondering if this is of significance,” a heavily accented voice said from behind him and Tony froze. “Let me enlighten you, Stark.”

Lights flared up in all directions, hard and unforgivingly artificial, not the gentle flame of a torch. Even in the armor he was quick enough to whirl around, afraid for a second that the Germans had gotten here before him. But the accent…

“Victor von Doom!” Tony spat the moment he recognized the green hood and cloak, the silvery and deceptively old fashioned Latverian armor. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I waited for you. I did not expect the great Tony Stark to be this slow in following a lead. After all, I sent you your father's notes days ago.”

“You sent the…?”

Doom, now standing in the middle of the cylindrical part of this ante chamber to the cave, had his hands clasped behind his back and studied Tony with annoying calm.

His features were hidden behind the terrible mask he’d chosen for himself, so reading him wasn’t easy. Tony could still see his eyes and a bit of scorched and discolored skin around the left socket. The accident that had sent von Doom down his path must’ve been severe. But nobody had seen the man without the mask and armor since the fire.

“I sent you the notes so they’d be safe — and so you’d come,” Doom announced. “I trust you kept them from Hydra.”

The Latverian despot was speaking to Tony as if they were friends. But the last time they had clashed, he’d tried to throw Tony into an acid pit, promising him there wouldn’t be anything left of him to find. That had been in Latveria. Where Doom belonged. How had he managed to slip across borders undetected? And why had he chosen to come at al; when Latveria was under as much threat from the Germans as the rest of Eastern Europe?

If there was one thing that Tony was sure of, it was that he had no reason to trust Victor von Doom.

“The notebook isn’t here if that’s what you were wondering,” Tony said, aiming for an equally casual tone.

“Not here…?”

It was Doom’s turn to whirl around in surprise. 

Ah, he had counted on Tony bringing it here, perhaps hoping to take it back. 

That Tony had memorized everything important was none of Doom’s business. 

“Bring it? After you basically set Hydra on my trail? No. It’s safe where it is now.”

Doom appraised him. “And yet you are here.” Doom nodded to himself and out of the corner of his eye Tony saw something flicker.

Annoyed at the show of satisfaction, and not least of all at having been so easily manipulated, Tony raised his arm and fired a shot at Doom. It went right through.

“Firing repulsor rays at a projection, Stark? You are wasting my time and my patience.”

“Oh, that goes both ways, Victor,” Tony, who had fired the repulsors specifically to confirm that Doom was a projection, snapped. “Now tell me what you want so I can be on my merry way. I have better things to do than argue with despots. Like… punch Nazis.”

The watery eyes, half-hidden by the mask, widened then narrowed. “You should be quick then,” Doom said. “I had expected you to arrive here yesterday.”

“You didn’t send an invitation.” The thin thread of Tony’s patience was about to come to its very end. “What do you want? How did you get the book?”

“A few years ago I learned of Baron Zemo’s interest in the Camelot legend. Why the lead scientist had turned to the idea of a magical sword I will never know, but because…”

“Can I cut this short?” Tony asked, aware that Doom hated nothing more than irreverence. Knowing what he did about Doom’s background, he was aware of exactly why that was, but with who he had become, Tony made it a sport to annoy him as much as possible whenever their paths crossed. “You were interested in Camelot for whatever reason — wild shot in the dark, it was magic. So you took Zemo’s research.”

Doom glared. There was no hiding it this time. “Magic, yes,” Doom said slowly. He knew Tony was mocking him for his quest to control mythical powers when even here in this cave he had just proved he was using _science and technology_ to reach his aims. “Magic and the key to power.”

“All right,” Tony said, “I buy that. What does it have to do with me?”

“Your father’s notes…”

“Zemo,” Tony said slowly, “was not my father.”

The statement was no lie. Zemo’s creation had effectively killed the man that had been Howard Stark. 

Visibly annoyed now, Doom straightened his back, puffing himself up to full height. “Why are you here then?”

“Hydra took my hotel room apart and killed good people to get the book you dropped on me,” he spat. “Whatever they want, I’ll get there first.”

“We are in full agreement then,” Doom said unexpectedly. “They have stolen something of mine and I intend to get it back before they can use it. _That_ is why I need your help.”

“Need my help,” Tony repeated. “This _is_ serious then. What did they steal?” 

“A shard of Excalibur,” Doom said gravely.

Tony had no idea why that was supposed to be a huge thing. But he remembered the notebook, the scribbled formulas and mechanical sketches. “A power source,” he guessed based on the knowledge of his father’s engineering legacy and Tony’s own experience with historical science that seemed like magic but was progress humanity had forgotten — like the Orichalcum in his mechanical heart that was now such an important part of powering his armor.

“A power source,” Doom agreed with a hint of suspicious lightness. “That is what I strive for. And so does Hydra.”

They gauged each other in silence for a full minute. With their respective armors in the way, only the glitter of Doom’s human eyes was visible and Tony’s face remained completely hidden — for once giving him the advantage in a heart to heart with Doom. 

He had a couple of options, and the sensible one would be to turn around, walk out and return to his friends, then tell Fury that their enemies were fighting it out between themselves. But there were the sketches; the haphazard plans Zemo developed for the artifact they were hunting. If Hydra found the power source and built the weapon Tony knew Zemo had envisioned, they might turn the tide. If _Doom_ got his hands on it — god only knew what the mad man would do with it.

Destruction seemed a likely outcome in either case.

Wouldn’t it be better if Tony was the one to find Excalibur — if it could be found?

Coming to a decision, he nodded, the armor’s joints making a soft noise as he did so. “Where are you? Any reason for letting me stumble in the dark here?”

“I expected you to be smart and come right for the prize,” Doom hissed.

Tony couldn’t help himself. He grinned, regretting for a moment that Doom couldn’t see how smug he was feeling. After all, Tony had decided to come _here_ instead of going right to the place that was likely the powersource’s hiding place. He’d been right to investigate what was going on before walking right into a trap. Doom had expected him to be the idiot who walked right in.

“Now don’t be petty, Mr. von Doom,” Tony said with deliberate mockery, “you left a projection behind for me and took pains to guard this place. It’s not all for nothing.”

Doom straightened even more. He was a tall man, even taller in all that armor, but he didn’t even reach Iron Man’s neck. “You’re right,” he admitted, “but we are running out of time.”

“Give me the details,” Tony demanded.

The projection raised a hand and coordinates appeared. 

Tony snapped the arm guard of Iron Man open to type the numbers right into the armor’s central navigation. At flying speed he could be there in no time. The map he had of the area marked it as a spot where old castle ruins overlooked a plain. Zemo’s notes had labelled it as a possible battleground from King Arthur’s time. 

“How are we looking?” 

“We?” Doom asked.

“Nazis? Hydra? Are you under attack? What did they take from you? Anything I need to know?”

“Meet me right at the coordinates,” Doom repeated. “You will find me outside the place the spies have taken.”

“I see,” Tony acknowledged. He would never make a good spy and he had no ambitions in that regard. Doom’s flair for the dramatic, on the other hand, seemed to go well with the unnecessary crypticness that Tony was used to from agents. “I take it what we’re looking for is there?”

“Yes,” Doom said.

It sounded straightforward — reason enough to expect it not to be.

“See you there,” Tony said, watched Doom inclined his head — and before the despot could say something annoying or imply Tony was following his bidding, Iron Man’s repulsor blast aimed right for the projection rig Tony had been scanning the cave for all this time. It took only one high energy blast to let Doom’s picture flicker out. 

Tony had seen technology like that before and had even started to look into it, hoping to use it for camouflage in the future. He hoped Doom would forgive him if he scavenged parts now that he’d been given the chance. 

He stepped out of the armor, and with the simple tools he always carried, got at the device. Taking it apart and storing the most important components took Tony less than a minute without Iron Man’s cumbersome gauntlets on. 

_Smart_ , he thought. _Leave it to Doom to give it a self-destruct mechanism. Lucky he didn’t expect the circuits for it to have no energy when it was opened._

For a moment, working under the light of Iron Man’s repulsor again now that Doom’s device had been taken down and all the lights had flickered out with it, he simply appreciated the ingenuity of the construction. Something about it seemed strange.

Too advanced.

How could Doom have this kind of technology? 

Tony knew he was a genius, even though he came off as a raging mad despot, even though he talked about magic and demons and condemning other people’s souls to hell. But this was a huge jump from current technology. It had the elegance of Tony’s still developing microcircuitry, but some parts and materials were unusual, futuristic, highly advanced. Tony would have to take a closer look later. For now he pocketed every scrap.

Then he took a look around.

Doom would be angry when Tony didn’t turn up on the spot — and that was an added bonus. Tony hadn’t been looking to face down Hydra. This was Doom’s game and for him Tony was a pawn and nothing more. Reason enough to take a moment to do what he had set out to do: research. Make sure this was all real and he wasn’t being played.

He spent a few minutes walking the length of the cave, following the walls to make sure there wasn’t anything he had missed. The cave was huge and empty apart from the equipment Doom had left behind.

Obviously, the man had been looking for something here; perhaps he’d found and taken it.

On the far side of the cave, Tony found another drawing, this one much older and weathered but mostly intact. It was the sword in the stone and a man — priest — standing before it in long blue ropes, holding up something like a golden stick.

Tony had no idea what that meant. Was it a wand? A staff? Was this Merlin?

He looked down. The cave floor as covered in dirt. With disuse the cave had been slowly reclaimed by nature, and erosion had done the rest.

There was no sign of a tomb or altar, but now when Tony looked at his feet he realized there had been a path marked by colored stones that were now covered up. A few shone through the dirt. He used his shoe to push at the earth and dirt to clear them up. Red stones and blue of a kind that had no place being here. This looked like Roman influence.

He went on pushing for a bit only to realize the path led from the cave entrance right to the picture of the sword in the stone. It must have been where the priest had walked if indeed — and it looked likely now — a cult had used this place.

Beneath the painting Tony discovered something else: Another marking.

Not of the three rods of light, not of fire. It was a triskelion surrounded by strange markings that looked like lightning bolts. Again, he could not discern its meaning.

The notebook hadn’t had this drawing as far as he remembered.

Lightning.

Electricity? 

Unlikely that the Celts would have understood the concept. And how would they have brought down lighting on a stone floor inside a cave where no thunderstorm could reach?

Magic? No. But he’d seen the secrets of places like Atlantis. Technology like that had existed and sometimes it found its way to unlikely places.

“Worth a try at least,” he muttered to Iron Man and pulled some cables from the armor. If he fried the armor’s currently running backup power generator then he could still run it with his mechanical heart device without any problem when he got back inside. And he didn’t need much. Just a spark…

Sparks flew.

He waited. Nothing....

A growling noise started up, rolling through the cave like the thunder that follows lightning. A stone panel sank down and slid away.

Tony stared into the cavity that had opened, blinking at the ease of this discovery.

Had Doom found this? Had Hydra gotten there before him?

At the bottom of the square foot compartment lay a piece of what could have been a scabbard. Tony reached down to pull it out carefully. Not much of it was left. It was the tip of a wooden scabbard which had some metal ornaments on it. His hand tingled with electricity for no apparent reason.

Nothing about this thing looked important. Not the metal, not the wood that at some time might have been encased in leather. The whole thing wasn’t larger than his hand. 

And it had never been complete. The edge of it was too clean. 

A sword or axe had cut it before it had been placed into this compartment.

Why had someone hidden a broken scabbard? Had it been destroyed in a fight? Had someone chopped it to pieces and hidden the different parts? Or was this some sort of holy relic the priests had hidden for its perceived value?

He couldn’t tell. 

It was no great source of power, but hadn’t there been a sketch of a scabbard in the notes? It had been scratched out for some reason and Tony couldn’t remember any notes actually explaining it. So much of Zemo’s notes had been illegible or nonsense. 

To be safe he decided not to leave it here. He took a cloth from his bag and wrapped it up, stashing it safely in his leather bag before securing the bag inside the armor again. 

With a soft growl, the little compartment sealed itself up again. 

Tony didn’t bother to hide it back under dirt and dust. Anyone would be able to see the earth had been disturbed by someone searching for something. It was the perfect moment to leave a message

“Found it,” he wrote into the dirt.

Then he switched a new tape into the recorder and said: “Jim, I know if something goes wrong, you’ll be the first on the ground to look for me. As you can see I made it to the first point of interest. I expected a Hydra encounter, instead I got a surprise audience with our favorite Latverian dictator. He claims he’s here in Wales and also that he’s the one who sent us the notebook. If you’re here because I haven’t checked in, I’m leaving the coordinates of my date with Doom alongside this message. Tread carefully. I’ll see you in New York.”

He scribbled the coordinates on a piece of notebook paper he ripped out, made sure the tiny tape recorder had rolled the message up neatly, and then placed both items into a metal container that was equipped with a Stark Industries-coded high security lock. Only three people besides Tony would know how to open it — and if against all odds Hydra found it there was nothing in there that they would be expecting from him anyway.

For a long moment he considered leaving the scabbard piece behind for his friends. But what if it _was_ worth something to his enemies? It could be a bargaining chip.

_That’s why the professors and archaeologists of the world think you’re a fraud, Tony. You take priceless relics with you into danger._

On the other hand — if he left it here there was no guarantee it would find its way back to a museum either. In any case, it was too big to be left in one of the secure containers he carried with him.

Mind made up, he placed the metal container below his traced message.

With newfound energy he climbed back inside the armor. “Time now to meet our favorite despot,” he told the armor.

The machine voice answered, “Power at 98%.” 

Tony full strapped himself back in and connected his heart to the armor..

“Power at 100%,” the voice corrected, softly. 

“Too right it is.” 

He knew where he was going now and he knew that he was expected. There was no need to hide his presence in the cave. He swung up into a hovering flight to test the ground and then let the armor accelerate, flying at high speed through the narrow passage he’d come through. It was the kind of unnecessary risk-taking that Jarvis berated him over constantly.

But Tony enjoyed these little moments too much. He navigated his way out and broke through the projection outside to take to the skies. By his estimation it would take him mere minutes to reach the coordinates Doom had given him, at least if he flew high enough. He angled himself up in a huge arc and kept an eye out for planes. Even here over British territory and far from the cities he didn’t trust the Germans to leave him be.

When he closed in on the landing zone, he decided to survey the area first. At least the blasted rain had stopped and he could see far and wide — but against the blue sky it would be easy enough to spot Iron Man, too.

Still, he needed to get the lay of the land. Because even now, the most likely scenario was a trap. Doom’s trap, Hydra’s trap — at the end of the day Tony didn’t care who tried to kill him, but he had a feeling someone would. There was a castle or manor down there that was easy enough to spot. He checked the coordinates, but it was situated a little above the spot Doom had pointed him toward. 

The map he’d memorized had placed the main site of this treasure hunt somewhere in this area.

Tony swooped further up in hopes of not being spotted, but then let himself drop a few miles to the north, far enough to avoid the sightlines of the manor _and_ Doom. Before he was going to cooperate with his Latverian nemesis, he wanted to make sure he had all the facts. Doom wasn’t to be trusted. 

He hovered close to the courtyard wall. 

Nothing looked out of the ordinary at first glance. But there were three guards carrying rifles, stationed on the other side of the lane. In the middle of Wales, who needed to post armed guards in front of their homes?

Iron Man landed, hidden by trees, and watched for a while. 

A car drew up. The guards stopped it. A window opened and then the car was allowed to drive the rest of the way up.

A tall man that Tony had seen before got out of the car: Johann Schmidt. And he wasn’t alone. Madame Masque stepped out on the other side.

At least he knew he had his work cut out for himself. 

Not wanting to draw more attention, he walked the rest of the way to the meeting place Doom had suggested. 

Nobody was there.

Or at least it seemed like nobody was there.

“You took your time, Stark.” Doom stepped slowly out of the shrubbery. That he managed to hold himself like a statesman in the middle of the woods after hiding for not an inconsiderable time felt like he was throwing down the gauntlet, more than his scathing tone. 

“It may have escaped your notice, Doom, but I am not one of your subjects. I’m not your errand boy either. And while I am the fastest thing out here short of radio waves, I have yet to hear a compelling reason to go along with your plans. Something more compelling than ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. We’re not friends, Doom.”

“We are not.”

“Good,” Tony said. “Some common ground at last. Now, you wanted my help and I appreciate that it must have been hard enough to admit that, so how about you tell me what’s going on.”

Doom glared at him before straightening up. In his pragmatism, Tony could nearly empathize. “In an attempt to hone my skills of the arcane,” Doom explained with flourish, “and to locate Excalibur, I built a device. But Hydra in their search for the power source they believe Excalibur to be drove me out of the manor…” 

“Your manor?” Tony asked. Did the British government know that the Latverian usurper owned real estate on their territory? That was information to pass on to the SSR for sure. “Why are they searching for the notebook?”

“Stark,” Doom hissed, “do not play the imbecile. Doom does not seek trinkets and neither did Zemo. Do you think Hydra would go to this length if they didn’t think there was power to be gained?”

He couldn’t speak for either Doom or Hydra — because while Doom could be reasonable and outright _smart_ , Tony had no idea what drove him to look for magical artifacts. But he knew Gialetta Nefaria, his past lover, renowned treasure hunter — and these days known as the grande dame of Hydra. Gia was a snake in human form, greedy and opportunistic but not a fool. She knew her history. She had good instincts. She wouldn't be pursuing this if she’d thought there was nothing to it.

“What kind of device is it you want back?”

“A doorway,” Doom said cryptically. “Doom built a cube that opens rifts in space and time. I can step in and be in my own castle.”

“That’s how you got here,” Tony realized. 

“Yes,” Doom said tensely, “and it is how I intend to return. But I’d rather see it destroyed than have Hydra turn it into an instrument of conquest.”

“Uh-huh,” Tony agreed, not enthusiastic about the idea of Doom using a device of that description either. It sounded more and more as if he needed a plan — a way to make sure neither side would be able to use the device as a weapon. But there was another pressing matter. “I understand you’re looking for Excalibur and you sent me Zemo’s notes to get me here. I know what I found in the notes.”

Algorithms. Formulas. The idea of a power source that would rival his mechanical heart. Zemo had been working on a way to improve Hydra’s mechanoids and Tony could imagine that the likes of Strucker and Schmid would found finding Excalibur appealing.

“We’re not looking for a sword?” Tony asked.

“Doom is looking for a sword, Hydra for an opportunity, a metal.”

“We all believe in legends when it comes right down to it,” Tony said. “You want to save Latveria by becoming a knight of the round table?”

“Stark,” Doom hissed, “do not mock me. You more than anyone understand what holding a mythical sword of legend would mean. In times like these symbols _become_ power.” 

He raised his hand and Tony was about to fall into a defensive stance, but Doom only knocked an armored finger against Tony’s armored chest.

The metallic clang it made resounded through the armor.

Doom was implying Iron Man had become such a symbol.

“That’s not what you’re looking for,” Tony concluded despite the show of pragmatism. “You’re looking for the sword, too, yes. Because of the metal?.”

“I,” Doom said, “am looking for knowledge and power. Doom has always been looking for teachers. Arthur’s is a time of magic.”

Tony shook his head. He believed it, but he simply didn’t put any stock in religion or magic. But to each their own.

He needed to focus on the next steps.

“Do they have it?”

“No,” Doom said. “If they had found what they were looking for then they would have used it to power my device. Then neither of us would be standing here.”

He had limited options — and leaving Doom to solve his own problems still sounded like the most appealing one. There were two things holding him here: Gia was up there, and that gave the danger of this situation some credibility, and Zemo’s notes. Despite what Tony felt about him, he had the warped mind of Howard Stark, and what Tony had seen in the notes of Zemo hadn’t just led him here — some of it had scared him. He only had to imagine what scientific breakthroughs a metal like the Orichalcum would have brought Hydra. And Zemo had expected to find something of its kind, something he could use as “the key to power.”

“We will wait,” Doom ordered, as if Tony _was_ his henchman. He crouched down to draw a simple outline of the manor into the dirt. “This is where the device was when I set it up. This is where one of us needs to be to get it.”

“One of us,” Tony stated. It was the room behind the third story window on the western side of the building. “And the other?”

“The other breaks through this door,” Doom indicated at the back entrance. “This used to be the study. This is where I kept my notes.”

In the armor, sitting down was never as easy as he wished, but Tony managed it gracefully enough, leaning his back against a tree. The nagging feeling that he didn’t have all the facts lingered. 

Doom was waiting for a reaction.

“I’m not interested in the map,” Tony finally declared. “The mystery of Camelot is enticing. I would love to explore it. But there’s a war on and I have a stake in it.”

“You will go after my device?”

He would prefer to know exactly what it was, but even more than that he would prefer to be in a position to destroy it, before anyone could use it.

Looked like they were already double-crossing each other.

When Doom nodded, Tony pondered what it was the man wanted to get from the study.

No use.

He had cast his dice and now there was nothing more for him to do than see it through and remember that despite present company he was in it alone.

They waited in silence, Doom never sitting down. He stood at the edge of the treeline like a general waiting for his troops to fall into formation, scanning the lane visible in the distance for cars or more back-up.

Nothing moved.

By the time that dusk set in, making it hard to see without the help of the armor’s vision enhancement, everything still seemed the same.

It left an unknown number of guards in the manor and at least two officers; Gia; Schmid; and two scientists, one of whom Doom cautioned was Arnim Zola, who was in line to become the next Zemo if Hydra didn’t find better alternatives.

Tony knew they already had a better alternative in mind, but he wasn’t going to impart that piece of information on Doom. The tables would turn soon enough and then anything Doom knew about Tony would be a danger to him and all the people he needed to protect. The despot was aware of it and even in the uncharacteristic willingness to cooperate kept his own secrets close. 

The two armored figures started their quiet walk up the slope silently. They parted ways closer to the manor, both now set on their task.

There was no need for words or goodbyes. The best case scenario was that Doom got what he wanted right away and Tony wouldn’t see him again for — hopefully — a long time.

Tony hadn’t checked in with Pepper, Jim and Jarvis, not wanting to alert Doom to their communication methods. He took the time now to send a coded transmission via the armor, hoping that the beeps of morse code would be lost on whoever monitored the skies for transmissions or the sound of nearing jets.

 

 _That_ was when he admitted to himself that he didn’t even expect that his appearance would come as a surprise. Obviously, Gia was here because they were waiting for him.

Because they had failed to retrieve the notebook in London.

He hoped that they would expect him to be the one to break into the library, because why would _Tony_ be interested in any device built by Doom? He shouldn’t even know it existed. 

Nearing the wall, he kept a close eye on the windows. There were lights in a window on the other side of the hallway, but the one he was aiming for was dark. A short look around the corner revealed no guards on either side. It would be best to fly up there, get in quickly and quietly, set off an exploding device, and then disappear.

That was perhaps not what Doom had in mind, but as Tony had kept reminding him: He wasn’t working for Doom. He highly doubted they were working together in any sense of the word, because Doom had his own agenda.

Tony was figuring his own out as he went along.

Boosting himself up to the window was easy. A switch narrowed and intensified the repulsor beam into a laser that cut through the metal latches with a point of his armor-clad finger. The window open silently, the latches not even creaking. From down below, the window had been judged wide enough to let the armor in. Now, as he hovered in front of the window, he had his doubts. Careful not to make a sound, he pushed the window wide open, let his gaze slide over the ground one final time to make sure no guard had spotted him – and then he pulled up his knees, the Iron Man folding into a still bulky ball. With both arms he pulled himself in, careful not to get the jet booster on his back stuck. 

Then he was in, happy enough to stretch and cut off the jets and repulsors to set himself down. 

Always aware that he risked discovery if he wasn’t careful, he pushed the window quietly back into the frame. It remained there and didn’t swing open again. It would have to do, in case a guard walked past. 

If everything went well he would make his escape in just a few minutes and then it wouldn’t matter anymore. 

He stepped away from the window then, and further into the room. It was dark, and Tony was alone. Something about that seemed strange. He took a cursory glance and the Iron Man’s sensors gave him a clearer picture than his eyes would have been able to in the darkness. 

Something about that seemed strange. 

If this room held a device — something of importance to both Doom and Hydra — then there should be guards.

He stepped around the equipment in the room to get his bearings. It was a workshop of some kind. A huge rectangular machine took up most of the space and to both sides of it there were workbenches and tables. On the wall someone had put some of the schematics for the machine they were building.

Tony swiftly looked around to see if there was anything at all that he could identify as the device Doom had described: rectangular and…

He turned to look at the machine.

That bastard!

He couldn’t have meant the machine. 

There was no way Tony could steal the machine.

Thinking, _that’s why the bastard didn’t object to my going for the device. He knew I couldn’t just take it and run,_ he gritted his teeth and looked around for more information.

Light streamed in from under the door that led to the hallway. Tony listened for any sounds, but there were no steps to be heard. Nobody was coming his way.

And if the silence was anything to go by, then so far nobody had run into Doom yet either.

Was that good or bad?

Tony couldn’t decide. 

His eyes fell on the schematics that had been put up over one of the workbenches. Tony knew very basic Latverian — enough to order a schnitzel at the very provincial main station of what was now called Doomstadt. He had no idea what the notes on the technical drawing meant, but he recognized them as Latverian. The only word he understood there was “machine”.

And that was self-evident.

He turned around to look at the rectangular platform.

What was it?

Where were the controls?

Careful not to make too much noise, he stepped around the thing to inspect it. It wasn’t easy to move silently in the heavy armor, but Tony had experience. Still, when he got out of here, it was time to work on Mark V and find a way to make the armor more efficient, lighter, quieter.

The platform was unremarkable and no more than four inches high. The smooth surface shone in the moonlight.

There were control panels all around it and cables led back and forth, but only one of them seemed to actually connect to the machine. Was Hydra trying to circumvent the control mechanism Doom had built? 

Had they succeeded? 

And to what end?

There was a small step that led up to the platform and from there you could reach the original controls which rose up on a metal pole and widened into a panel with buttons and a chronometer. Tony squinted at it.

_Curse Doom for getting me involved in all this. Curse myself for going along without knowing what I was getting into._

He leaned the weight of the armor forward, tested with the first step how much of it the platform could hold. It didn’t creak or groan. Finally, Iron Man stood on top of it, still unsure what function it served. A closer look at the controls didn’t help decipher the mystery.

How was this device a threat to the world?

A weapon?

To be honest, he didn't care. He only cared that he wasn’t reading any disquieting radiation levels. If he set an explosive device and got out of here fast then at least he would be able to move out of the blast radius.

Quickly, letting the device slide out of the armor and right into Iron Man’s big hand, he set the first device below the control panel. Activation took the press of a button. He would leave two more on the connected machines and go.

But as he turned, something in the room _changed_. 

The door was still closed, there were no sounds drifting in from the corridor – and yet Tony knew immediately that something was wrong –

– even before the lights in the room flared up as one and Doom stepped out of the shadows or out of nothingness into being right in front of the platform.

Camouflage device?

Had Tony fallen for the same trick twice?

His arm shot up to fire a repulsor beam, but before he got the blast off the armor froze and Tony cried out in pain. Electrical currents were running through the metal, effectively freezing the armor in place.

When Tony looked at his arms he saw that wires wrapped themselves around Iron Man like a net. 

“Don’t try to move,” Doom threatened. “The wires are charged. You struggle and the charge will increase.”

“Nice,” he growled back. Anger pooled in his stomach as Doom approached. 

“As promised,” Doom said and Tony knew without a hint of doubt that he was no longer the one being addressed in this conversation.

He tried to whirl around, to at least face his enemies, but the wires were draining the armor – and with it his heart. Wheezing from the pain it was causing him he fell to one knee, realized he was unable to control his fall, and landed very ungracefully at Doom’s feet.

“Wie vereinbart,” a male voice agreed from behind Iron Man. Tony had not met Schmidt often enough to be familiar with his voice, but he recognized a Northern German accent when he heard it. 

“I delivered Stark and his suit, now give me the Excalibur shard.”

Furious at this obvious turn of events, Tony hissed inside the armor, feeling much like a helplessly trapped cat that wanted to claw out at its cagers. Then Doom took the few steps up onto the platform and despite their heavy masks, their eyes met. Tony _felt_ Doom looking right at him and fancied that he could see the anger flaring through Iron Man’s eye-holes.

“It’s not personal, Stark,” he said and nodded. Did he think that was any consolation?

“You better remember this, because I’m going to make it personal,” Tony hissed. 

Gia stepped into his field of vision. Her face was still the same jade stone mask he remembered. For a second he felt regret that her loveliness had been replaced by something this hideous – then he remembered what she had done and what she was capable of and quickly buried the emotion.

“ _We_ are going to make it personal, Herr Stark.” Schmidt had stepped to Gia’s side. Where she was wearing all green to match her terrible masks, he was wearing a black uniform with the green insignia of the Hydra division. His uniform and stance – hands firmly folded behind his back – imitated every SS officer Tony had ever dealt with. From what little he knew that was where Hydra had recruited him.

“I don’t doubt it,” Tony answered, already using the mechanical controls inside the armor to protect himself. He wasn’t going to wait idly for the dark destiny these people had planned for him to come to pass. First he needed to get rid off the wires, and he had an idea for that.

All it would take was magnetizing his outer hull. That should be enough to make them useless and return his freedom of movement.

If he was quick and quiet about it his enemies wouldn’t even notice before it was too late. He still had the explosive device he’d shoved under this platform’s control mechanism and three more that he only needed to drop to incinerate this room.

By now, Doom had taken position in front of Iron Man as if he was guarding him from Hydra. 

Tony gritted his teeth. He knew the most likely explanation for this behavior was that Doom hadn’t been paid for his – not unusual – treachery. Tony was still angry that despite his suspicions, he had walked into this trap suspecting someone was waiting for him.

Jim, Pepper, Jarvis – they all had warned him 

He could berate himself for his curiosity driven stupidity later. 

Now he needed to focus.

“Das Bruchstück, Herr Schmidt, wie vereinbart,” Doom demanded and Tony understood the accented German well enough: “The fragment, Mr. Schmidt, as we agreed.”

Fragment.

Excalibur shard.

Was Tony the price Doom was paying for a power source? That seemed unlikely. Hydra wouldn’t give up anything they thought useful to their cause to Doom — even to get their hands on Tony.

“As we agreed,” Schmidt said and Tony had a feeling he was speaking English for his benefit. 

From where he was doubled over, trapped in the metal suit, he could see him brush a hand over Gialetta’s shoulder. They nodded at each other in a show of familiarity that Tony had once shared with the woman. The situation made him suspect this had been staged for him – to get him to wonder. 

He had other things to wonder about right now.

He was ready. Building up a magnetic field around Iron Man would take a matter of seconds.

But first he wanted to see what he’d been sold for.

It was always good to know what you were worth.

“You don’t want to know what we’ll do with Iron Man?” Schmidt asked as his eyes glided over the armor.

“Doom is not in need of stolen expertise – whether the machine or the man inside. I am sure Zola expected to be your new Zemo, but he too is an imbecile. The fragment, now.”

Schmidt huffed, visibly aggravated by Doom’s continued arrogance. It wasn’t hard to tell that he couldn’t glean Doom’s intentions any more than Tony had been able to. But to placate his erstwhile ally and finally get to Iron Man, he pulled a cloth from his coat pocket and delicately pulled it open to show Doom what he was holding. 

From his vantage point, Tony couldn’t see it.

Whatever it was, it was small.

But Tony had seen power in small things too often to dismiss it. 

“That your fabled power source?” Tony asked between heavy breaths when the power drain caused him more pain. It was the right moment to set the process into motion that would free him – and he did.

Doom grabbed the cloth and whatever was hidden its folds; inspected it carefully. He hadn’t moved aside to let Schmidt and his henchmen at Tony yet. 

“What we found in the sanctum. Is it what you wanted?”

“It is,” Doom agreed; at the same moment the electrical wires gave. He turned slightly to look down at Iron Man, again giving Tony the feeling he was trying to see through the mask. 

“We looked at it, of course,” Schmidt noted, too casually to be casual. 

Iron Man’s hand got free, but Doom’s attention had slipped back to the new Hydra leader. 

“It has nothing to offer us. There’s no power. It’s not like the Atlantean metal we’ll rip from Stark’s chest. It’s an old rusty piece of what might have been a sword.”

“Sometimes,” Doom started and looked as his machine, then back at Iron Man, “looks can be deceiving.” 

And to Tony’s utter chagrin he dove out of the way the moment he fired his repulsor.

“Iron Man’s free,” Schmidt shouted, himself diving into safety with Gia. Tony focused his fire on them before a number of soldiers came running into the room. 

It was a second of miscalculation. Gia shouted: “Doom, do something!”

Tony should have set of the explosives and fled the scene, but when he whirled around to do just that, Doom was right beside the control panel and he’d used Tony’s distraction to catch his arms in new wires. The hull was still in a magnetized state, so Tony knew they wouldn’t hold long if he could just get the pulse back up enough. 

“I’m about to, my dear,” Doom said, the artifact in one hand, his eyes focused on Iron Man, unfazed by the rain of bullets around them.

Tony froze when the drain started up again, pulling him back into the pain, back into submission. He had a split second to decide whether to magnetize the hull or fire his repulsor to send this machine and Doom both to hell.

“You see, Stark,” Doom explained. “This was always the plan and this –” he held up the hidden fragment of metal – “was never the power source.”

Around them the room had fallen into chaos as soldiers turned to apprehend Doom and Iron Man. Then Doom typed something with two fingers, flipped a switch. Schmidt, Gia; everyone shouted as the machine started up with Doom and Tony still on it. It was draining the armor — his mechanical heart — through the wires and finally Tony had his answer to why he’d been lured here in the first place.

“You are,” Doom said simply,

Tony fired the repulsor blast at the control panel, saw Doom’s eyes widen just split seconds before the platform lit up and the light rose, and where it covered Doom’s feet they began to vanish. He had no time to look down at his own feet as the control panel exploded with the power of the little bomb he’d planted.

The last thing he heard from the room were screams and German curses, then he was falling like a log through the sky, like Iron Man was tumbling out of another airplane without the use of his jets and thrusters. The room had fallen away, the pain melting into a steady presence that spread from his heart through his ribcage and into his arms. 

Then he hit the ground, hard.

The armor had been designed to shield him from lethal impacts. He still felt the landing’s affect in every single bone of his body. His head was spinning and there was no air in his lungs. Gasping, he finally managed to take a breath.

Inside the armor, something was hot and tingling.

“You destroyed the machine!” 

Doom.

Oh, in the middle of disintegrating, falling and dying, he had forgotten about Doom. He tried to scramble up before a laser shot from Doom’s fingers, but when he found his bearings enough to gather himself into a crawl and saw Doom, it looked like the other man was no better placed. His hand was up, supporting his head.

For Tony too, the ground had yet to stop spinning. 

“What the fuck is this?” he hissed in Doom’s direction.

The only thing he knew for sure was that they were no longer inside the room and surrounded by Hydra and their forces. 

“You were trying to sell my hide to Hydra!” he spat when he realized what had happened and that he was stuck again with Doom. 

“I used you,” Doom admitted immediately and without a hint of regret. “But you damaged the machine.”

And there was no machine. 

Instead, there were bits and pieces of technology strewn all around them.

“You were selling me out to people who want to kill me or turn me into their puppet – and then what? You nearly killed me with your… What was it?”

But Doom ignored him. He stood and walked briskly to where the cloth had fallen. The artifact wasn’t there though he searched, and even in his armor, holding himself as regally as always, Tony could see Doom was frantic to find the price he’d bargained for. At last he found it, picked it up and stared.

It wasn’t a rusty old piece of metal as Schmidt had implied, but a piece of blade, silvery and shiny in the sunlight.

“Where the hell are we?” Tony muttered, as he looked around for any hint of where the machine had landed them. After he’d figured that out he could worry about the _how_.

A wooden pole appeared in front of his mask and he stared, not sure he had seen it right. The armor’s vision settled, and Tony saw horses surrounding him. His sensors must have been shut off.

“You are trespassing in the land of Arthur our lord in dire times. What vile magic brought here. Whose banner do you carry?”

A knight in white armor had halted his horse in front of Tony. The lance he was carrying wasn’t the kind Tony knew from movies, but more a pike. 

A knight.

“Arthur?” Doom asked and he approached them slowly, the piece of metal still in his hand. 

“You’ve arrived in Camelot with your tricks, sorcerer knight,” the knight said gravely.

Behind him one of the others whispered loud enough to hear: “That armor looks like one of Morgana’s monsters. How can he stand in it?”

Tony’s mind was still caught on one word though: _Camelot_. It couldn’t be… If he was in the past — why could he understand what was being said? The language… It shouldn’t be possible

Slowly, he turned to Doom: “You built a time machine? This isn’t possible.” 

“And you cut off our way home, Stark. You destroyed the machine.”

He let that sink in. After a whole day of manipulation, secret weapons and intrigue, the only answer he could give was, “good.” 

Something like that in the hands of Hydra _or_ Doom was a terrible thought.

But now, after a day of running after secrets and doubting the very existence of Camelot, he found himself in the presence of the knights from legend. A dream come true, or a problem to master — he would find out.

He pulled his helmet off, showing the men clearly that there was a real man inside this armor. “I yield,” he said and looked over at Doom, daring him to challenge his decision. Reluctantly, staring at Tony as if he was going to make him pay for all of this, Doom stood down.

 _Getting stuck in the past without a way home. The worst thing to happen to a futurist or the greatest adventure of one Tony Stark_ he thought. _If I live to tell the tale_.


	2. A Marvels Mystery

Steve Rogers wore his favorite _Marvels_ cap to hide his features as he strode through the Stark International _Marvels Anniversary_ exhibition. People rarely recognized him, and when they did it was for for his works in comics, though he wasn’t one of the big names. There was one independent comic that he’d created when he’d still been a scrawny young man from Brooklyn, and his repeated work on _Marvels_ covers.

His involvement in it made him proud. 

The brand had struggled for a few years, yet Stark International hadn't let anyone doubt that they would prevent their founder’s story from falling into ruin. Over the years the stories had changed, the covers had changed, and more recently the comics had rebooted whole parts of the _Tony Stark Adventures_ , right beside a line of new comics centered around the new hero team, the _Avengers_. 

Readership had dwindled and changed, resurged and then dwindled again over the decades, but _Marvels_ , and with it the stories about Tony Stark, survived. 

Steve had always been fan.

It could be said that in many ways he wouldn’t be where he was if he hadn’t found a hero to look up to. Even when he’d been sickly kid, even when he’d sat at his mother’s bedside watching her waste away – there had always been a Tony Stark adventure he could turn to. Nerdy kid that he’d been then, he’d loved the classics, from Tony’s adventures hunting for historical artifacts, braving the wrath of dragon-like creature Fin Fang Foom to his later adventures as Iron Man. The war adventures had fueled Steve’s interest for history and and he’d read up on everything he could about the real Tony Stark.

That he’d been able to meet – even become friends with – some of the people who had known him was a blessing he was eternally grateful for.

What would the world think, he pondered, if they could see Captain America stroll through the exhibition. The current Hydra-fighting hero looking up at the first hero who had fought Hydra during the war?

In the next frame was an issue of the first print of “Tony Stark and the Secret of Camelot.” Of course, Steve knew the story and also the circumstances under which it had been published. It had been the last issue of the _Tony Stark Adventures_ at the time. Stark had never returned from the search he’d gone on; had left his chronicler Pepper Potts with a notebook that Hydra were after. 

She had written the adventure a few months after Stark’s team had resigned themselves to the fact that Tony wasn’t returning and there was no trace of him or his armor. It must have been a blow not just for his friends, but the army as well. 

Whatever Tony had been involved in though – the remaining leadership of Hydra had been taken out in an explosion. A few months later, the war was won.

Historians had never found out if Stark had perished in the explosion he caused, but it was unanimously believed that Hydra’s Welsh base, built without the knowledge of the British government, meant they could have turned the war if it hadn’t been for Stark and his Iron Man suit.

Steve knew all about the story, all the facts, all the speculations. The involvement of Latveria and Victor Von Doom had never been explained or even confirmed.

He stopped in front of glass case that held little metal ball and a description of how Stark and his band had used devices like it to leave each other sensitive messages when there was no other way to do it. He had never seen this one before. The sign above it read: “Stark’s last message.”

A photograph showed how the little container was found: on the floor of a Celtic sanctum, it had been placed in the word “I found it.” 

He pushed the button that played the message: “Jim, I know if something goes wrong, you’ll be the first on the ground to look for me. As you can see I made it to the first point of interest. I expected a Hydra encounter, instead I got a surprise audience with our favorite Latverian dictator. He claims he’s here in Wales and also that he’s the one who sent us the notebook. If you’re here because I haven’t checked in, I’m leaving the coordinates of my date with Doom alongside this message. Tread carefully. I’ll see you in New York.”

It was Stark’s own voice, a pleasant baritone that even at that moment in time sounded cheerful and curious. The recording was terrible and in places you could barely make out what Stark was saying. The tape had been digitized only a few years ago in an effort to preserve it and by then it had already suffered. The sign above the case gave the whole text in written form and some explanation on Tony’s last mission. There was a side note about the fact that Victor von Doom had returned to Latveria in 1974 – seemingly unchanged in age and manner, but ruling the country in even more draconian a fashion than before – and that he had spoken of Stark on a few occasions, always referring to him as a worthy adversary and one of the few smart men deserving of Doom’s respect. His comments added fuel to the mystery of Stark’s disappearance.

From the limited brushes Steve’d had with Latveria, he knew that even today there was a rumor that Doom, who had been deposed in the late 80s and never seen again, was only waiting to return to rule his country one day. Like Arthur. Like Camelot.

He huffed.

Had the dictator styled himself after Stark’s the last adventure? In reverence or in mockery? 

They would likely never know.

On the other side of the room was one of the remaining armors. Steve had seen it propped up at Stark International headquarters. His first time visiting there was on a school trip years ago when Mrs. Potts-Rhodes had told them a little about the company. Of course, she had also mentioned some of her early adventures with their founder.

Today, when kids came to the company, which was still nominally in possession of the Tony Stark Foundation, because his heirs had never been willing to right out declare his adventure at an end, they asked about the Avengers, funded and supported by the Stark International and the Foundation.

Steve was proud that Captain America was part of the new superhero team. As Steve Rogers he was now the somewhat unofficial chronicler of the Avengers’ adventures, even though he transformed them into kid friendly comic stories – but as Captain America he had become a co-chairman and trusted member of the team. 

A couple of kids were measuring themselves up against the armor to see how big it was. 

“Do you think Captain America could beat Iron Man?” a boy asked.

“Sure thing!” the girl beside him said gleefully smiling.

“Thor could anyway,” another kid said softly. 

“I’m not sure,” Steve said to them in conspiratorial tone. “I think Cap would have a hard time of it. Iron Man was one tough nut to crack.”

The kids stared up at him in surprise. Even with the baseball cap and the casual clothes, Steve was a tall man with broad shoulders and they had to crane their necks up. “I’d like to think Iron Man and Cap would have liked each other very much. They’re both fighting Hydra, after all.”

“Cool,” the girl said and her eyes went wide. “They could have teamed up, like the Avengers.”

Steve grinned and watched them scamper over to the next room that held airplanes that Stark had invented or worked on. 

He stayed there, taking in every detail of the armor that he’d drawn so many times as teenager. From the depth of his memory the voice of Abraham Erskine asked in his heavy German accent: “Do you want to have your own adventure line someday?”

“I’d rather do what’s right even if nobody ever knows,” Steve had replied. “Not that anyone ever will.”

Ruefully he smiled to himself. Now he was writing his own adventure line, some adventures involving Captain America. Erskine would have laughed in his face, but in his usual friendly mockery. He’d been such scrawny idealist back then, recently orphaned and always sick. His friend Arnie had joined up with SHIELD to help fight the Hydra threat that had been resurging all around the world, but that had recently been discovered to fester inside the US. Steve had been left behind, left to fend for himself without any support. And, yet, when he’d met an old man in trouble, hunted by goons in black and green uniforms, Steve hadn’t hesitated even for an instant.

It had been the beginning of an interesting friendship that had changed his life forever. 

In the renewed fight against HYDRA’S influence, Captain America had become a symbol of freedom, a symbol to inspire America to fight anything that threatened it.

About to move on to the next room, he noticed a glass case he hadn’t seen before. It was standing off to the side, close to the display of Stark’s last known message. Inside was what looked like rusty metal at first glance. When he stepped closer he realized that the exhibit had the shape of an Iron Man gauntlet. The metal fingers were corroded so badly that three of them appeared stuck together. Stony sediment encased part of it – and yet there was a strip of shiny metal still there, uncorroded, silvery. 

The sign read: “A last clue to solve the mystery?”

Quickly, Steve scanned the rest of the text that claimed Jim Rhodes and Pepper found the gauntlet in their search for Tony’s whereabouts about seven years after the man had vanished. They’d found it in one of the sanctums in Wales connected to the Camelot mystery that had likely cost Stark his life.

The dating of the exhibit confused Steve. It read, _late 4th century_ , but how could that be true? The gauntlet was Iron Man’s. There was no doubt about it in Steve’s mind. He’d spent years learning all the details of the armor design to draw it accurately. This was obviously Iron Man armor – with the way the finger joints were designed, the way the armguard sloped into a bulky tube that allowed for the electronics to spread into the hands. Most of all though, there was the unmistakable round metal ring with what must have once been a glass sphere inside. It was cracked and broken now, but the ring remained intact. 

A repulsor grid.

Steve had seen this too many times not to know it for what it was immediately. 

But how was it possible?

The text stated that the gauntlet had been found with other Celtic objects: beads, a knife, a metal clasp. The first dating had been due to the other objects and their placement. All objects had been buried inside the sanctum for safekeeping. 

In the 4th century? 

Steve shook his head.

But the text also stated that a recent carbon dating agreed with the general dating of the objects, but also that there was no way something like the gauntlet could have been built in the 4th century.

For the longest time he stared at it.

One of the first novels that had been published as the “New Adventures of Tony Stark” had been about his secret fight against Hydra, about Stark fighting in the shadows and Steve had come across the secrets of a long lost gauntlet in the post-war novel _Tony Stark and the Secret of Time_. Was this what had inspired Pepper to continue the adventures of her lost friend? Because she’d come upon another mystery?

“Steve? What are you doing here?” 

Feelling caught, he whirled around to see James standing behind him, smiling. The man was the splitting image of his father, if Steve could be so forward to judge such things. Since Jim Rhodes passed away, James Jr. had taken over part of the business. That he would be the one involved in the exhibition didn’t come as a surprise. He’d always been the one who’d loved the exploration, the historical work his parents had been involved in.

“James! It’s good to see you. You’re not surprised I’m here, are you?”

“Not really. You’re a Stark nerd through and through,” the older man said and grinned. They’d known each other since Steve had been brought on as a writer for _Marvels_ – after his change, and after a tentative alliance against HYDRA and the threat of the Red Skull had formed between Erskine and SHIELD, between Cap and the people at Stark Industries. 

“Are you telling me that’s a bad thing?”

“Not really,” James repeated and grinned wider. “Ah, you found our controversial object.”

“Is it real?”

“I hope so,” James grinned. “Mom only released it for the exhibit a few months ago. It was the best kept Stark Foundation secret after repulsor technology and Atlantean metal.”

Steve smiled. “How is she?” 

He remembered Pepper Potts as a vivacious and always-friendly older woman, tough as a nail. He’d seen her take apart journalist at press conferences and cow board members who’d tried to take the tech division of Stark International out of her hands after her husband died. At one press conference, he remembered her standing at the mic, eyes sparkling with pugnacity: “We are Tony Stark’s legacy. I’ll give all of the company and its profits to the Avengers before I let any of you sharks taint his memory. They are his descendants more than _any_ of you.”

“She’s old, Steve,” James said with a tired smile. “But stubborn to the last. On good days, she still goes out as if she’s a young woman...”

“I should go see her.”

“Please do. She would love to see you.” _Cap_ , James mouthed. His silent acknowledgment of who Steve was when he wasn’t walking around exhibitions in civilian clothes. “Monica isn’t happy about this.”

James pointed at the glass case.

“She would have preferred it stay in that locked vault. She and Mom had a huge fight about it. Does say something when even in her state, Mom wins her confrontations with Sis.”

“Monica didn’t want it to be shown? Why? Isn’t it legit?” 

Monica was James’ younger sister, and Steve had come to know that her personality was tougher than steel, the perfect blend of her father’s calm tenacity and her mother’s resolute courage. That her mother could still put her in her place by sheer force of will meant something; Pepper Potts-Rhodes was someone to be reckoned with even now, and her daughter, even as Director of SHIELD, loved and respected her enough to cede to her still, albeit with clenched teeth. Her parents had helped built the organisation she was now leading, together with the general who’d recruited Tony into the army. Today it wasn’t just the country’s foremost intelligence agency, it was their main line of defence against Hydra and other malevolent forces. 

Steve had the utmost respect for the work SHIELD was doing, and without them greenlighting Project Rebirth, Steve would perhaps not even be standing here – but despite everything, he had discovered that he wasn't a good soldier. He was a passable agent, sometimes, but Captain America did his best work with the Avengers.

James sighed heavily. “I let too many experts have a look. My best guess is: It’s the real thing. It’s an Iron Man gauntlet that has all the signs of having been built by Tony Stark down to the metal alloys used. Traces of orichalcum, minor traces of uru, steel and vibranium. That’s a hell of a thing to fake, because only a handful of people even knew how Tony and Jarvis did it. Let alone the micro-circuits – nothing like the ones we know today. Someone built this with the materials of the 1940s and lost it somehow nearly 2000 years ago.”

“Lost it,” Steve repeated. “And it was put in a temple?”

“A sanctum, a holy place. We don’t know its significance.”

“And Monica knows this? It’s not about her parent’s reputation then, is it?”

“No, she thinks anything like this should be kept inside SHIELD. With Hydra, Red Skull, AIM and now the likes of Loki around, she prioritises secrecy. No need to give anyone ideas.”

“Makes sense from a SHIELD point of view. Monica’s smart. She knows what she’s doing,” Steve agreed, but couldn’t tear his eyes away from the rusted gauntlet. “Do you think that’s what happened to Stark, James? He got stuck in the 4th century? Would you believe that?”

“I live in a world were the heroes of the past were a person flying a legendary suit of armor keeping his heart going with ancient metal and a Spider person; a world that now sees heroes shrinking to insect size and growing tall enough to rival skyscrapers. We have an Asgardian god fighting with the Avengers now, Steve. And Captain America and his shield? Saved all of us in more ways than the world will ever know. There’s not much I wouldn’t believe.” James gave him a significant look.

“Exciting times we live in,” Steve agreed and nodded, silently thanking James for his faith in him.

But the thought of Tony Stark having died far from home, having been torn asunder by time and space or worse, filled him with sadness.

The man could have done so much more for the world if he had lived. 

“Monica thinks Mom’s being sentimental. She was never that into the Tony Stark myth and she’d rather not see Hydra tear the world apart over the hint of a weapon that displaced their enemy in time.”

“If that’s what happened.”

“If that’s what happened, yes. If the poor guy didn’t end up under the syringe and served the rest of his days as the mastermind behind Hydra’s resurgence. Fear of that drove Jarvis and my family to look for him for decades, you know? Confirmation of his death would at least have put that to rest, would have let them sleep better.”

Steve knew the rumors. For years AIM had claimed that the new Zemo who had founded them was in fact Stark, following in the footsteps of his father, Howard, who had been turned into Zemo during World War I. There had never been a confirmation for the claim.

If he thought about it, Tony Stark dying and leaving them a last mystery like the gauntlet seemed like the ending the man himself would have prefered.

He nodded.

James clapped his shoulder.

“Visit Mom if you have the time. She’d be glad to see you. And let me know if you and... _your friends_ need anything, alright?”

“I will, thank you, but the Stark Foundation has done so much already.” Steve said. For the last three years he had been the proud tenant of the former Stark Mansion that had recently been named Avengers Mansion by the press. It had served as the team’s headquarter for months now. 

“Just keeping my little sis on her toes,” James joked and walked toward the exit, giving Steve a final nod of goodbye.

“You and me both,” Steve muttered. He had promised to help SHIELD with a joint mission to uproot a known AIM base, but Director Rhodes was looking to permanently pull Captain America into the fold again. They were heading for another confrontation about methods if that was the case. 

A look at his watch confirmed that he still had time to suit up before he was expected at the SHIELD helicarrier briefing. 

With a last glance towards the mysterious gauntlet, putting away ideas for future Tony Stark comics in mind, he trailed towards the exit and found a small darkened video room where interviews of Stark’s friends and family were playing, relating some memories and stories about the man and hero. 

When Steve sat down, an interview of General Nick Fury was playing. He talked about the way he’d recruited Stark as a civilian agent in the war effort. Steve had seen many pictures of the man, but this was the first time he saw a recording. The subtitle revealed it was from 1959, well before he had served as the first Director of SHIELD in the late 60s.

The impression he gave was that of a stern general. Steve had met many of the kind. 

He doubted the cunning man under the facade had very often dropped his masks. _That_ was what had made him a great Director of SHIELD. Fury and his leadership had left its mark on the organisation to this day.

But so had the two lovely people who were next up in the interview reel.

The Rhodeses were sitting close together in an old-fashioned living room. Right before they started speaking, Jim Rhodes grabbed his wife’s hand, squeezing it. At that time, what had people thought of it – and had the couple cared at all? What many problems must they have faced as a high-profile mixed race couple? 

Steve had never heard them speak of it, and yet he supposed it must have been a challenge they’d been more than ready to face after all the adventures they’d braved.

“In a way, he brought us together,” Jim said softly. “He needed a new chronicler and he never minded that the penman chosen turned out to be a dame.”

“Tony never minded,” Pepper agreed. “He could be single-minded and callous when he had a task and knew someone else was trying to get in his way, but he gave people their chances. He never judged you prematurely.” 

“Did you know you’d be his heirs?”

“No,” Jim said simply. “Tony never talked about dying, because – and that’s not something most people knew about him – because he always knew death walked beside him. He went out with a quip and a roguish smile and people who didn’t know fell for it, and sometimes I suppose even we did.”

“We did,” Pepper agreed. “He never even mentioned that he’d set his affairs in order. He pretended to live this carefree life and let the press believe he was this frivolous industrialist heir, sometimes I wasn’t sure he was interested in the company. But he was. He took it all very seriously and a lot that he did, he did to fuel his inventions. People can’t imagine – when you were out in the field with him, he was a force to be reckoned with. He had his faults, but he always tried to do more good than harm. During the war it became more personal. The Hydra threat – Zemo – that was a constant threat, a noose hanging over his head waiting to tighten around his throat. We all knew that. But when he didn’t return I didn’t want to believe it. He’d done the impossible too often.”

She smiled at the camera, watery.

“He believed in me when nobody else would. He gave me this job that people would have said only a man could do it. When he said, _put your name on it, Pep, not the pseudonym_ , I was surprised. But I took the chance and here I am now with all these opportunities in investigative journalism, writing a new Tony Stark adventure.”

“What made you decide to do it?”

Beside Pepper, Jim shifted in his chair and squeezed her fingers again. 

“It was a joint decision.”

Jim added: “There are quite a few untold adventures that at the time we couldn’t bring up. Now there’s less of a threat.”

“And,” Pepper emphasised, “I need this. I made him promise it wouldn’t be the last Tony Stark Adventure I wrote when he went on that mission – and then he never came back. I think I owe this to all of us. His legacy lives on in these stories, in the company, in us.”

“After all these years,” Jim offered, “Tony’s still changing our lives.”

The screen went black.

A countdown started up, indicating when the reel would start over. 

Steve waited in the darkness, not sure why he was feeling so melancholy today. Perhaps the SHIELD meeting was looming over him, because he knew SHIELD and the Avengers were heading for a confrontation. He waited as the numbers counted backwards. Then the reel started from the top. 

Tony Stark smiled at the viewer from a black and white film and said: “Of course, the stories are outrageous. So’s my life. After all, I’m Iron Man.”

The impish grin the man had turned at the camera made Steve chuckle. He was beginning to think the girl from before had a point and he should write a comic about Iron Man meeting the Avengers. Perhaps he’d suggest it to Pepper when he next visited.

It would be outrageous – and so much fun.

* * *

“I hope you’ll have time to get Skull before he sends more assassins to Washington. Seeing as you’re always busy with your Avengers. It would be much easier...”

“Monica, I know what you’re going to say. The answer is no.”

“Do you know what I’m going to ask, Captain? Really?” He could read both her annoyance and amusement when the corner of her lips turned up slightly and her eyes flashed in warning. 

“Yes,” he told her. “You want me to join up with SHIELD again _and_ you think I should convince the Avengers to do the same.”

“Of course, the Avengers team would remain largely autonomous.”

“That’s a relief,” he said sarcastically. “The Stark Foundation is already helping us there.”

“I heard.” Monica Rhodes folded her hands on top of her desk the way Steve had seen her mother do. She was an impressive woman, beautiful, tall like her father. Her straight brown hair was done up in a bun that underlined the strictness of her tone and the cold determination written all over her face. Steve liked and respected her, although they had a hard time agreeing on things – and she had the tendency to talk to him like he was a young SHIELD applicant and not Captain America. “You’re trying to broker a deal with the United Nations Security Council, Cap. Of course I know that – my business is to know everything.”

“We are not brokering deals, Monica. We’re making sure we have legal foundation.”

“You would have a legal foundation if you were part of SHIELD.”

“We are _not_ part of SHIELD.”

“Yet.”

It was an old argument. Captain America had been part of SHIELD when HYDRA had thrown parts of the country into a new Civil War, he’d helped drive HYDRA forces out of Europe and even now he helped track the remaining HYDRA cells across the world. He had been their poster boy, a soldier in the US army who for a while had been on every front line. For Steve that was done with the moment the president declared that the state of emergency had come to an end. For Monica, getting him back into the fold had become a mission. He felt like throwing his hands up, but instead he had to laugh. “You’re not giving up.”

“I take it that neither will you give me what I’m asking for?”

“The Avengers are in agreement. We’re not part of SHIELD and that’s how it’s going to stay. We’d prefer the transparency of a charter and the United Nations are the organisation that seems to be best equipped to work with us on giving us a public framework to operate in across borders.”

“I see.” Monica considered that with pinched lips and narrowed eyes. “You will still join us in our hunt for the Red Skull?”

It only took a mention of that hated name to make his smile freeze and his expression become stony. “I will hunt him if you won’t, but if you’re onto something, I want in,” he nearly growled.

He’d gone through a rigorous testing for years before the Erskine had set Project Rebirth into motion. Steve knew he had never had any intention of making more than one Captain America, although SHIELD had been pushing for that. Erskine had saved Steve as much as Steve had saved him. And then Steve had failed him. Red Skull had had Erskine killed a few years after Steve’s transformation and Steve hadn’t been able to save his mentor.

Steve would bring the red faced terrorist to justice if it was the last thing he did.

Monica nodded. “You know I mean well, Cap. No hard feelings. I do have an organisation to run and world peace to keep.”

“You can keep it peacefully,” he suggested. “You don’t have to go toe to toe with the Avengers.”

She shrugged. “I know my parents had their way of doing things, but I’d prefer weapons of mass destruction to be accounted for.”

His brow furrowed and his expression darkened. 

She saw it, of course, but didn’t give an inch. “The world’s only super soldier. A god? A radiation accident with the temper to destroy everyone?”

He tried very hard not to bark back an insult. Monica was testing his patience on purpose today.

“General Ross called again,” she said lightly. “He’s only waiting for an incident. Then he’ll have a field day.”

“Oh, so this is for protection? For our own good? It has nothing at all to do with SHIELD wanting assets?” 

“You know me.”

“I do,” he agreed. “And you know me. I do stand with my team on this, Monica. We’re not anyone’s assets or agents. We’re not available for power play and politics.”

She sighed. “You’re incorrigible.”

“No,” he huffed. “I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

He was done with this briefing. She’d given him what he’d come for and she’d told him that Agent 13 would be his liaison for the rest of the operation. That was fine with Steve. He held Peggy Carter in high regard. She was one of the best agents in the field.

Getting to his feet he gave a nod of goodbye to Monica. 

She didn’t get up. Watching him with a pinched expression, she waited.

Did she sense he still had something to ask?

“I met your brother,” Steve said from the door. 

“Ah.” She nodded. “You were at the exhibition, of course. He’s very proud of putting it together as they’re closing in on the Marvels anniversary. I never quite knew why my parents kept that part of the business going. They put so much work into founding SHIELD and yet they insisted on giving half of their secrets away for the sake of the Marvels stories that nobody reads anymore.” 

He frowned at her.

“I’m sorry. Did I insult your hobby? You can’t say it’s a day job, Captain. You have your hands full already. It’s my parents’ way of being charitable.”

“Thank you, Monica,” he scoffed. He _knew_ he wasn’t the best artist or storyteller out in the world of comics or adventure stories – and in that Monica _had_ a point, because becoming one of the best meant putting in work all the time, honing your craft and skills, developing your style, more drawing, more writing, more reading than he had time for. He put the disappointed thoughts away – Erskine had given him health and the strength to put bullies in their place, to live up to the person he had always wanted to be, so there was nothing to be disappointed about. There was something else he had wanted to ask. “James said you didn’t want them to display the gauntlet?”

Monica shrugged. “It’s another secret, another riddle. Do you think Red Skull needs to get the idea that someone, Stark or HYDRA, had found the secret to time travel? Do you want him to put his resources into acquiring something that could break our reality?”

“No,” Steve said immediately and he was in full agreement with her there, but she was overlooking a crucial fact. “I simply wanted to know if you think there’s anything to it. I think you answered my question.”

She stood up, arms folded in front of her chest. Her dark SHIELD uniform complemented her mood. “Do me the favor, and think of your mission first, Steve. Don’t let the stories get to your head. Life isn’t a Tony Stark adventure and we more than other people know it.”

He nodded, waved at her and made sure to close the door behind himself as he went.

Life wasn’t a Tony Stark adventure.

But Stark’s life must have been a crazy enough to rival Steve’s. And Monica’s words, the continued rumors about Stark and Zemo, even the Stark Foundation and the Rhodeses’ efforts to keep Stark’s memory alive, only served to show that even to this day Stark was a thorn in HYDRA’s side.

“Let’s see that we are too,” he muttered and stroked the edge of his shield for reassurance.

* * *

Steve didn’t forget about the Tony Stark mystery he’d encountered. It was too marvelous a story to be forgotten, of course, especially when you were reviewing stories for an anniversary issue you were supposed to draw a cover for.

But aside from making notes about crazy time travel ideas, he had shoved it to the back of his mind and focused on the real problem ahead. 

In the last weeks there had been three HYDRA attacks on American soil, a seemingly unrelated assassination attempt on a member of the state department in Washington, and a message broadcast by Red Skull to American citizens on primetime television, made possible by a satellite hack. The message was simple: there would be more attacks as long as governments were “conspiring” against HYDRA.

Expertly and eloquently, Red Skull was selling HYDRA as the wrongfully hunted. 

People, as far as Steve could gauge public opinion, weren’t buying it, but fear of new attacks festered in the heart of the nation.

With that Red Skull had reached his true goal. People were willing to give away more of their freedom in return for assurances of security.

Steve kept a watchful eye out.

So far, he had no lead on Red Skull’s hiding place.

He wasn’t even sure if Red Skull was in the US. He could be hiding anywhere. He was about to slip into uniform and put on the red gauntlets to pay Agent 13 and her Commandos a visit to see if they were making progress when a familiar alarm sounded from his pocket. He fished out the communicator tool Hank Pym had made for all of them.

“Captain America here,” he said in his slightly deeper Captain America voice.

Thor was the one speaking: “Our friend Hulk is on a rampage.”

“Did he lose control?”

“He attacked me,” Thor growled, “without cause.”

“You know how he gets, Thor. Don’t let him get away and don’t let him harm anyone. We have to make sure this stays contained.”

Because if they couldn’t even contain their own teammate, Monica Rhodes or Air Force General Thaddeus Ross would finally get the long awaited reason to interfere with the Avengers.

“It will not be an easy task,” Thor replied, “but I will not let any harm befall this city.”

“Understood,” Steve said and switched channels to broadcast to the whole team. Thor hadn’t asked for help, but that he had picked up the Avengers communicator at all spoke volumes. “Avengers Assemble,” Steve said loudly and was quick to slip into the uniform and pick up his shield, sprinting to the “garage” that was in fact more of hangar where his bike and also the Avengers’ jet were kept.

“Steve!” 

“Janet?”

A tiny streak of yellow and black fluttered past him and was joined by a little red person on an ant.

“We saw what happened,” Hank said as he whizzed past and in the next moment both of them stood beside him, having returned to their normal human size. “It looked like Hulk attacked Thor. Did they argue?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know more than what Thor said over the communicator.”

“They caught it on camera, Steve. It looked bad. They’ll use it to paint Hulk as a monster again.”

“He is, though,” Hank interrupted his wife. “I mean we can’t say that working with him has exactly taught us how to deal with him effectively.”

“He’s not a monster.” Janet shook her head vigorously. “He’s been in control more lately.”

Steve knew what she meant. Acceptance had been new for Hulk and he’d thrived on it. But the allegiance with him had always been rather tentative. Hulk, as they had learned, was always in a rage or very close to one. It was hard to gauge what might have happened to set him off, but Jan was right. This would be used against Hulk, regardless of what had driven him to it.

“We better make sure he doesn’t do any harm, make sure he calms down. If we can show the world that he’s with us and that we can help him when he loses control, that might make a difference.” 

“We’d better hurry then.” Hank held up a phone playing the current newscast.

The Air Force was deploying choppers, even though Thor had managed to take the fight out of the city. Things weren’t escalating, but they could certainly look better.

“Jan,” Steve suggested. “Get on the phone. Call Rick Jones. He’s one of the few people we can trust on this and who knows Hulk better than any of us.”

Steve had a soft spot for the young man, who had shown himself courageous in many dangerous situations. For a while Steve had even trained him, making sure he knew how to defend himself. As one of Hulk’s, and as of late the Avengers, few publicly-known friends, Rick was better off with some fighting skills. Who knew which of their enemies would try to hurt Rick when their backs were turned?

Janet picked up her communicator and quickly set about her task. You could always count on Jan’s good heart. Of all the heroes Steve had teamed up with over the years, Wasp was perhaps the one who had taught him the most about the power of true kindness. Even now, she was hoping to help Hulk.

While she talked to Rick, Hank and Steve readied the jet and took them out to the skies, the engines booming as they sped towards Hulk’s last known location.

“Avengers,” Thor’s voice boomed over the jet’s communication system, “SHIELD has joined the battle.”

“That’s not good at all,” Steve muttered. “Thor, can you focus on Hulk? Make sure things don’t escalate with SHIELD? Director Rhodes is waiting to pin this one on us.”

He brought them up to higher flying speed while he was speaking. They would be there in a matter of minutes.

“Hulk has taken it out of my hands,” Thor replied, but he sounded unconcerned. 

Steve hoped that meant there was nothing to be concerned about, and not that Thor looked at this as an Asgardian god would look on at human affairs. 

By the time they could see the Helicarrier, Thor was hovering at the right altitude to join them. He entered the jet without anyone having to tell them. Below the jet, devastation spread in all directions.

“Hulk?” Hank asked.

“In part,” Thor said and looked apologetic. “I got carried away, but so did soldiers who joined our fight.”

Intent on keeping the focus on the most pressing matter, Steve asked: “Where is he?”

He couldn’t imagine that Hulk had been captured. Of course, he knew there were contingency plans – not just for Hulk but for all of them – but he doubted that someone like Hulk would come quietly. If he’d been captured, the Helicarrier would be on fire.

“Avengers,” it was Monica’s commanding voice, blaring through airborne loudspeakers through the air. “Stand down. This has now become a SHIELD matter.”

“As everything inevitably does,” Jan quipped. She like all the Avengersteam members knew Steve worked with SHIELD sometimes, but she also never disguised her discomfort with the intelligence network.

He knew the right frequency, so he hailed the Helicarrier directly. Patiently he waited until Monica cleared the channel. 

“Cap,” she greeted.

“Director Rhodes,” he said and nodded back. “You seem to have things well in hand here. We’re leaving.”

“Thank you,” Monica said and closed the channel as abruptly as she’d opened it.

“We’re leaving, just like that?” Janet sounded disappointed. From the corner of his eyes he saw Thor frown unhappily. Only Hank didn’t react to his announcement and waited for his team to come to a decision.

“The Hulk isn’t here anymore, is he, Thor? So, we’re leaving.”

All Avengers got his meaning, nodding, grinning, Thor clapping his shoulder. 

They would find Hulk.

Before anyone could come to harm – including their angry green friend.

* * *

Steve kept an open channel in case SHIELD or the Fantastic Four wanted to contact them and share leads.

Hulk had been sighted crossing the Atlantic. By now the beastly Avenger could be anywhere. How fast could he swim? How long could he keep going? Steve didn’t know the answer. They’d never put it to the test.

Hank and Janet were leaning over a screen, studying the currents in this part of the ocean, trying to decide where they’d continue the search.

“Was anything wrong with Hulk?” Steve asked of Thor.

“He seemed…” The blond Thunderer hesitated. Thor rarely hesitated. “Distressed,” he finally ended the thought as if it had taken him this long to come to find the right description. 

“Was he angry? That people fear him?”

“In pain,” Thor elaborated. “For a time during the fight, he seemed in pain. He held his brow, as if he had been beset by a terrible aching of the head.”

Steve and Hank exchanged a quick look.

“You think this was manipulated,” Hank concluded from their silent exchange.

“I think we know very little about what happened. But remember how we formed a team?”

“Because Loki manipulated us into fighting each other,” Janet said and nodded, eager now because she realized what Steve was implying. The Hulk might be in need of their help and not their condemnation.

“Let’s agree that we don’t have all the facts yet. Let’s find them and help our friend before someone with less kind intentions does and it ends in disaster.” Steve nodded to the rest of the team. Hank held up a screen to show him the most likely locations they should search, Janet giggled delightedly and shrunk to hover over his shoulder as he picked the coordinates and took them away, and Thor clapped a hand on his shoulder.

They were still learning, but this team thing was going to work out.

In the jet they could cover vast distances rapidly and they checked the first locations in two hours. They found themselves over Europe by the third. They were speeding over a stretch of the Atlantic when Jan – who had started monitoring the news and transmissions coming from ships – spoke up: “He was sighted north of here. A ship wanted to fish him out. He seemed exhausted, but broke through a net when they tried to get him onboard. He’s heading further west.”

She passed Steve the note with the coordinates and Hank checked the maps in the system.

“If he keeps going straight, he’ll hit land in about an hour. Ireland.”

“And if he’s going on a rampage there, that’ll make it an international incident,” Steve reminded everyone.

He didn’t need to explain why he put the jet through its paces. 

Thor declared: “I’ll take to the skies and see what I can find.”

Steve nodded. “That way we can cover more ground.”

He watched Thor get out, letting himself fall into the winds and fly beside them for a bit before he veered away.

“I think I have something on the radar. Gamma radiation levels say it’s probably Hulk.”

“Let’s go and see.” 

Steve took them lower. It didn’t take much searching. A rock formation rose from the sea that Steve was hard pressed to call an island; the Avengers team could perhaps all squeeze on it, but not if Jan or Hank grew any larger than their current size.. 

He could also see Hulk without a problem.

His green skin stood out against the rocks so clearly he was hard to miss. But he had also raised himself to his full height, punched the air and then grabbed at his throat, roaring.

“Something's wrong,” Jan said and her expression was full of worry and compassion. 

“We’ll find out what’s going on.”

“At least this isn’t an inhabited area,” Hank said, trying to look on the bright side.

Steve typed in the necessary commands on the jet’s controls and let it hover over the island. Hank had already called his ant to him and shrunk down while Jan did the same, though she only became small enough for her wings to carry her. She held out a hand to Steve, grinning.

He grinned back. “I don’t need a parachute, Jan.”

“Aww, look at you being all smug about it.” She still held out her hand. “I can push you in the right direction. We might be pressed for time.”

Accepting her hand he let himself fall out of the jet, and she pulled him along as they were both dropping towards the rocks.

“Hulk’s still rampaging,” Hank informed them while they fell.

Then Steve landed, catching himself on one knee with Jan pulling him up to make sure he didn’t come in too hard. 

Hulk roared, but he wasn’t reacting to Steve.

“No, no, no, stupid voices,” he shouted. “Stupid voices know nothing. Hulk not monster.”

Steve surveyed the place, gave Hulk a good look. The broad green face was contorted in pain.

Then Steve saw it.

A metal sphere.

A disc. 

A metal disc attached to Hulk’s throat, which he was trying to get rid of.

“Hulk not pawn. Hulk not tool. Hulk not monster.”

“Hulk!” Jan called.

“No!” When he heard Jan’s call Hulk looked up, his eyes settling on Steve.

Steve braced himself.

But Hulk roared again, making the stone under their feet shake. Steve pulled the shield from his back to be ready in case anything happened.

“Hulk,” he said calmly and watched Janet hover closer carefully. Hank had already skirted out of sight, probably trying to get in position in case they needed to keep Hulk surrounded. “Listen to me. If there’s something wrong, we can help. We’re your friends.”

“Hulk no friends,” the monstrous green figure whined and hit a boulder with his fist, destroying it so completely that chunks flew in all directions. Steve used the shield to keep from being speared by fly shrapnel, even as Hulk continued to claw at the glittering metal shape on his throat.

“What is it, Hulk? The thing on your neck?” Janet asked, her voice sharp and chirpy and yet uncowed by the rampaging force they were facing. She was treating him like she’d treat any friend, _anyone_ in distress. 

“Hurts,” the monster answered, growling.

“Let us help you,” she tried again.

“No!” Hulk held his head. For a bare second it looked like he would keel over and go to his knees, then he jumped up, making the island shake with the impact.

Steve was sure they would have a fight on their hands, but he turned and ran.

It was unlike Hulk to run before things had gone out of hand.

Something was more than wrong.

“Follow him,” Steve shouted. 

Fortunately, Thor had arrived above them and was in pursuit already, 

The rocky surface of the island didn’t make it easy for Steve, but he expertly jumped over boulders and swung himself across rocks. Hulk threw a huge rock his way and he dove out of the way, using the shield to deflect it to the side.

“Hulk, wait!” Jan shouted, hot in pursuit. 

The island wasn’t big enough to run, Steve thought, as Hulk ran straight into nothing, vanishing before their eyes. Hank and Thor stopped, startled, as Jan and Steve ran right through the illusion.

On the other side of whatever this was, the island stretched out much further than it had seemed to at first.

Steve looked back over his shoulder and saw Thor frowning at them, but the illusion was gone. He didn’t stop to investigate, focusing forward. He tried to keep up with Jan. He didn’t want her to confront Hulk without back-up.

Far ahead he saw Hulk vanish into a cave.

Jan whizzed in after him.

Then boulders were flying, and with a tumbling roar the cave entrance crushed into itself.

Hulk had made sure Steve couldn’t follow.

“Jan? Jan?? Wasp, come in?”

“I’m fine!” 

Hank arrived beside Steve with Thor in tow. “What happened, where is she?”

“She went into the cave after Hulk.”

“Why does she always have to get herself in danger?” Hank asked in clear distress. He grew first to his normal human size, then to a towering height, and started to remove the rocks that were now blocking the entrance with Thor’s help.

Over his shoulder Steve looked back at the illusion that had made it seem this part of the island didn’t exist.

He squinted but could see nothing out of the ordinary.

“Magic,” Thor said.

Steve raised an eyebrow at Hank. “Best I can tell you right now,” Hank quipped. “No technology appeared on our scanners. But when you and Jan went through, the image we were seeing started to shimmer and bleed away.”

“Hulk went through first. I didn’t see any change then.”

If this turned out to be magic, then things were eerily like their first team-up as Avengers. Loki had lured them into his web by magic and illusions then too. But Thor seemed sure his brother was imprisoned in Asgard.

Who else could it be? 

Not AIM.

But HYDRA had dabbled in mystical forces now and again.

Steve hoped this wasn’t them.

But some foul play was definitely at work.

Hank put aside some boulders and with a rumble other rocks slid towards the entrance, nearly knocking Thor over, and sealing the cave up again. 

In his ear piece he heard a surprised intake of breath. Jan said: “Oh!”

“Wasp, is everything okay?”

“Oh god! Steve, you need to see this.”

“What’s wrong? Janet, are you okay?”

A moment of silence followed. “Janet?”

Hank had become nervous the moment he heard Janet’s voice. He and Thor were digging as fast as they could. Steve stepped closer to help.

Then Janet whispered: “We found Iron Man.”

An opening into the cave formed and it was stable enough for a man to step through. The words made no sense. 

They were here for Hulk.

Iron Man?

What did that even mean? Had Wasp been put under a spell? Was she seeing things?

“All to Wasp’s location,” Steve ordered.

Hank went through first, having it the easiest with his ability to adjust size. Steve followed him, careful not to dislodge any more stones. Then he was in. Behind him Thor had much more trouble squeezing through. 

A few meters into the cave it opened into a cylindrical cavern. The room seemed too symmetrical to be anything other than man-made, but there was no sign of anyone around. 

“Janet?” Hank called.

“Over here!” her voice drifted over from further down where the room led into another cavern. “Steve, look at this!”

Hank flying right above his shoulder, Steve hurried.

Thor’s steps sounded behind them telling him they were complete again.

When he rounded the corner, he saw Jan floating in the middle of the room, inspecting a stone statue. In the dim light it took him a moment to realize what he was looking at.

A hulking turbine sloped down the back, a stony tube ran from the back along the front… and the stony mask of Iron Man seemed to be looking right at him.

He was speechless.

A statue.

Made of stone.

Of Iron Man.

In a cave in the middle of the Atlantic that had been protected? By magic? 

None of this made sense. 

The statue was made from the same stone that surrounded them and it was obviously old. There was no question about it. It was covered in vines and Steve wondered how any plant had found a way to grown in here, but then he saw some sunlight invade the cave from up above them. There was an opening, letting a beam of light fall right onto the block of stone in front of the statue onto which the Iron Man’s hands were leaning, as if he was holding something down. 

Steve stepped closer to inspect it.

Jan was fluttering her little wings to follow him.“There’s an inscription,” she said. 

“This can’t be real,” Hank whispered. “Is this a Marvels anniversary joke?”

“Not that I know of,” Steve said, suddenly possessed by the memory of the impossible gauntlet he’d seen at the exhibition. 

He looked at the place Jan was pointing him at. Iron Man was holding his hands in front of himself as if he had wanted to grab something, as if he’d tried to melt something with his repulsor fire. What exactly wasn’t clear, because it had never been fully modeled from the stone.

Steve stepped closer to inspect the mask and the visible details. Whoever made this must have studied the pictures and illustrations of Stark and his Iron Man armor as well as Steve had. They were perfect. And yet there were some minor changes to the design as if the armor had been worked on.

But why? Why make a statue of Iron Man here? Had Stark really been stuck in the past? Was this his tomb? Had he been buried here? The real man?

“What of Hulk?” Thor asked.

“Oh,” Jan startled and flew back towards the others. “He went deeper in, but he growled and… there was another crash. He might have found his own way out.”

“He’s gone?”

“I don’t know, Hank. I found this and forgot all about following him. I’m so sorry.”

With his red gauntlets, Steve brushed away dust from the stone to see the inscription better. It was weathered and at first glance looked worn enough to be illegible. Then the words danced in front of his eyes and he read aloud: “When those of honor call for aid, the sleeping knight awakes.”

“The sleeping knight? It’s Iron Man! Not a knight. Right, Steve?” Janet flew back to him.

“It looks like it.” He was glad that the Captain America cowl was obscuring part of his face, that the gauntlets masked how badly his fingers were trembling. “Why would someone make this?”

He touched the armor, tracing lines in the stone with his gauntleted fingers. The details were intricate. Too perfect even.

As if someone had modeled the stone around the real armor.

But that was impossible.

“Another _Tony Stark_ mystery,” Steve whispered reverently, surprised at his own excitement. He needed to tell James, Pepper… “Nice to meet you, Mr. Stark.”

He let his hand glide over the Iron Man gauntlets, feeling reminded again of the piece of armor that had been displayed in a museum in New York. His eyes fell on the fingers and for the first time he saw the uncanny intricacies of the workmanship that seemed to contradict the material, the placement of this work inside a cavern in the middle of nowhere. 

And the magic.

Then he realized something was shifting, a joint cracked and moved.

Janet gasped loudly and everyone froze as stone cracked and burst and fell away. Steve stood frozen as metal appeared under stone and Iron Man sagged forward, a disembodied voice shouting: “Damn you, traitor!”

The stone continued to fall away and the pillar that held the armor’s gauntlets imprisoned bled into a puddle. They came away, holding a broken piece of a blade. “Damn you, Doom.”

The mask looked around, searching, one arm raised now so that Steve was looking right into a brightly shimmering repulsor sphere. 

Steve took it all in, but doubted his eyes. “Magic?” he asked. “Avengers, is anyone else seeing this?”

“I see it. I don’t believe it,” Hank said. 

“A robot?” Thor asked unimpressed. 

The armor straightened and Steve took a cautious step backwards when the arm swung around, threatening to blast at anyone who attacked. 

“Who are you? Where am I?” the voice from the armor spoke. “Where is Doom?”

Steve’s throat felt terribly dry. Details of all he knew of Stark’s last mission fell into place. “Stark? _Tony Stark_?”

The helmet snapped up suddenly and a handsome male face appeared above the heavily armed armor – and Steve would have known it anywhere, with those high cheekbones, the eyes that searched for secrets everywhere and the moustache that looked elegant and old fashioned in the here and now. “Yes, I am Tony Stark. Who are you?”

The voice. It sent a surprised shiver down his spine. Steve recognized it, too.

From recordings.

From a final message Stark had left that was now in a museum.

“You’re Tony Stark!” Janet blurted.

“Yes,” the man’s face darkened, his brows knit together. “ _Who are you?_ ”

His gauntlet remained slightly raised. Stark was ready to defend himself. Steve wanted to say something reassuring, but how were you supposed to speak or _think_ when you were faced with your childhood hero come to life. If that was true. Part of him had trouble trusting it.

“We’re the Avengers,” Thor explained proudly.

Tony let his eyes flit over the group and then at last he looked at Steve, who was standing right in front of him.

“American colors?” he asked and his face was pale, his eyes hopeful. “You’re American.”

“I’m Captain America,” Steve said, feeling strange about saying it this way. 

“Am I home? Did we… win?”

The gravity of it all only occurred to Steve when he saw Iron Man stagger and fall forward on one knee. One armored hand was still clutching the broken blade as if he was holding on for dear life.

“Stark? Are you all right?” 

Then the armor toppled to the side. It rolled onto its back. The man’s unprotected face turned up – pale and marred by lines of exhaustion.

“Hank! Thor! Help me!”

Frantically he grabbed the man’s unconscious face to see if he was breathing. Part of him was still convinced that all of this was an illusion, a magic trick, a way to trap them. Perhaps he was under the same influence that sent Hulk on a rampage?

But then Thor and Hank helped him break the man out of the armor, helped him stretch him out, make sure he was alive, human – and real.

“We found Tony Stark,” he whispered. “The real Tony Stark.”

If Steve was dreaming this, then he hoped it would be inspiration for the best Iron Man story he’d help write yet.

He let himself fall back, sitting on the cold stone flow, trying to sort his thoughts. 

“Let’s get him home,” he finally ordered. “Let’s take Tony Stark back home.”


	3. Tony Stark Lives Again

A cool hand stroked across his brow and Tony shifted, blinking up at the lights above him. Electricity. Artificial light. After weeks of being stuck in Camelot, blinking into the blinding shine of a light bulb should have been welcome. But this was even brighter than the lights he’s used to. Have two weeks made lamps seem so extraordinary that he feels this way?

“Jarvis?” he groaned.

“No,” an unfamiliar voice said soothingly.

“Is he waking up?” This time an disembodied female voice chirped. “Is he all right?”

“He’s stirring.”

Tony took a deep breath. His head was swimming and his eyes felt heavy and dry, as if he’d fallen head first into the Sahara –– something he’d sworn he’d never do again.

“Pepper?” he whispered. Was Jim there?

Engines were humming softly, softer than he remembered. Had it been so long that he’d forgotten what a plane sounded like?

The cool hand was back, grabbing his hand. “Rest,” the man said and Tony tried to blink his eyes fully open this time. 

His mind was clouded. Had he been sedated? 

Fear jolted through his body. Had he been captured? 

Why was the last thing he remembered Doom’s terrible laughter? (The man should be forbidden to laugh. Period.)

What had they been doing? 

Tony vaguely remembered his hands drenched in blood, holding a body, a man in chainmail. A knight. Arthur had been wounded, when Doom had led Morgana’s forces right to them.

They’d fought.

Doom had grabbed Excalibur, ready to use it to travel to the future.

“Thank you for being so helpful yet again, Stark,” the madman had mocked. “I will find my way home now.”

Tony’s eyes flew open with the memory. A man with blue cowl was sitting beside him. Apparently he was stretched out on a cot. He tried to raise his head, but the world started spinning, he felt nausea creep up on him, and so he let his head fall back helplessly. 

“You’re safe,” the man said. A bright white A was adorning the forehead. A?

The colors.

Tony let his head roll to the side and they settled somewhere around the stranger’s midriff. Red and white stripes. A blue chainmail uniform. Red boots. Red, white and blue.

A for America.

Hadn’t he said it? 

“Captain America?” Tony asked, putting the pieces together and coming out more confused. The man looked down, met his eyes without flinching. 

“That’s what I’m called, yes, Mr. Stark.”

“Iron Man,” Tony said by way of introduction, but his arms felt like lead and he couldn’t make himself reach up to offer an actual handshake. 

The man didn’t seem to mind. “I know, Mr. Stark.”

Tony tried to nod. The formality exhausted him. The room was spinning. “Did you drug me?”

“We gave you something to keep you calm,” someone else said. Not the woman. Not Captain America.

He tried to look, but the vertigo got worse. He closed his eyes.

“Ant-Man, what do you mean? Is he okay?” the female voice asked. 

“He’s exhausted, fatigued, dehydrated. And he’s here although he should be dead. Not sure that qualifies as okay. He’ll live though.” 

Ant-Man? Who had thought up a terrible monicker like that? Pepper would have been appalled. Jim even more so. 

The man beside him shifted. “Salts and fluids?”

“We have everything we need. We’ll set up the IV.”

“IV,” Tony muttered. His headache. The voices weren’t loud but felt like earthquakes in his head— “You’re not Hydra, are you?”

“No,” the woman said and for a second he thought he saw her grow from fairy size to a fully grown woman. He must be very out of it if he was seeing things.

But then… Arthur, Camelot, Morgana. A fairy wouldn’t have surprised him at this point.

“We’re not Hydra,” the man beside him – Captain America – said and shifted back to look at him, “we’re the Avengers.”

That sounded silly and – dangerous. But like the kind of call sign Fury would come up with. So perhaps an answer to the mystery was staring him right in the face.

“All right,” Tony said tiredly, scrunching his eyes shut tightly. The light that had been so welcome a second before was causing him more pain now. A migraine. Dehydration. Yes, that made sense. The pain was spreading out behind his left eye and he concentrated on breathing slowly through the nose. The last thing he needed was being sick in front of strangers that might still turn out to be enemies.

His hands weren’t tied. Nobody had put him in a cell. That was a good sign.

Lulled into a sense of safety he allowed himself to drift back into the first stages of sleep.

When his arm was gently grabbed, he opened his eyes. The glinting of needle sent a wave of adrenaline through his system, but when he sat up too fast he nearly doubled over. “Oh god,” he groaned, himself not sure if he was referring to the needle or the way his head was spinning, making him feel he was sitting in an uncomfortable rocking chair. 

Captain America caught him by the arm before he could fall and he clung to his shoulder for a moment that felt like an eternity. That the man let it happen settled his nerves somewhat.

He was acting like a friendly.

The needle was still there, but not on a syringe.

“Water and electrolytes,” another man in a red suit explained. Tony tried to focus on his face, but the monstrous metal helmet gave him pause. “Ant-Man?” he asked finally, even speaking made him more dizzy. “Whose brilliant idea was that?”

“Mine actually,” the man answered, his mouth moving under the helmet and forming a grin. 

“Hi,” a woman said and waved. She had short brown hair and was wearing a black and yellow outfit. He thought he saw little fairy wings flutter behind her. “I’m the Winsome Wasp.”

“That seems fitting.” 

Only then did it occur to him that he was still clinging to Captain America’s shoulder like a child. He let himself fall back down, peering up at the red, white and blue uniformed man’s face, exhausted enough to just fall unconscious again. 

“You were afraid we’d inject you,” the man said calmly, and Tony noted it was no question.

“Bad experience. There’s a specific syringe out there with my name on it that I’d rather avoid.”

“With Zemo’s name on it,” Captain America corrected, and met his eyes again in a show of sympathy. 

“How do you know that?” Tony whispered. Unease wanted to creep back into his bowels, but the man gave him a look of the deepest understanding.

“We’ll talk later. We’re glad you’re safe.”

He’d been distracted enough that he only realized now that the needle pricked one of his veins and the two men in the room were making sure he held still. Nothing much happened after. He stared at it, feeling queasy.

“Can someone contact General Fury?” he asked, but he was drifting off. 

“We’ll take care of it. We’re on our way back to New York.”

Jarvis, Jim and Pepper where back in London though, weren’t they?

New York sounded nice though.

Far away from the war, from Camelot, from Doom…

The soft engine noises were lulling him in, but the headache spiked and he turned to the side, trying to find a better angle to rest his head. With a heartfelt sigh, he felt oblivion reach for him with her long, dark fingers. 

“It’s really Stark,” Ant-Man whispered. “All scans say he’s real.”

Captain America shifted in his seat. “All I’ve seen adds up,” he agreed. “We’ll settle him in and figure out what happened.”

Settling in sounded nice, figuring out what happened even more so.

Tony fell into the waiting arms of sleep.

* * *

The next time Tony woke it wasn’t the glaring of electrical light pricking his eyelids. A stray ray of sunlight was falling through a window and music was drifting over from a radio. He had always been a good dancer, and he knew his swing, but he had never been one to care much for music in his home. 

Then it sunk in. Hadn’t he been on a plane? How was he now in a room? 

He looked up towards the window.

A soft breeze drifted in, moving the curtains.

He didn’t recognize them, but when he glanced around he recognized the room immediately. He hadn't spent much time in New York, but this was his room. Someone had changed the curtains and the bedspread, but he was lying fully clothed on the bed in his own room in Stark Mansion in 890 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, New York City.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed to see if he could sit up.

Where were the people who had been on the plane with him? Captain America? Ant-Man? Wasp?

The music was drifting in from the next room, the door was slightly ajar. So was the window.

When he was sure that the room wasn’t spinning and his headache was gone, he got up to look out the window. The garden beyond was the one he’d always known. He fixed his eyes on a tree and wondered. Something was off again.

Everything was familiar, but slightly out of shape. Had the tree been this big when he’d left?

He turned to inspect the room. Things had been moved and changed here, but it was still the room he recognized. There was the tome on Atlantis on the shelf and the cover of his first Marvels adventure hand framed on a side of the room, right beside the map of Africa he’d found on their brief search for the legendary Wakanda. 

That had been cut short when Tony’s heart nearly gave up. Virgil had been with him then, but it had been Jim who’d pulled Tony out and got him help. 

There was even the water damage on the edge of the paper from when they’d had to wade through the river…

If this room was fake, if all of this was an illusion designed to fool him, someone had gone into the minute details.

Then it struck him: where was the Excalibur shard? He remembered it being in Iron Man’s hand when he’d faced the Avengers. Where was it now?

Had this been a trap to get it?

He turned around to look for it, and there it was. Someone had put it on the nightstand and he hadn’t even noticed it in his confusion.

Relieved and even more bewildered, he reached out and let his fingers glide along the runes on the blade. Arthur had carried the sword and Doom had stolen it when Arthur had been wounded. 

Tony had been the one to break it, while Doom had tried to use its power to start up the new time travelling device and Morgana had tried to stop Tony and Doom to take it for herself. The sword had started glowing and then it broke and the last thing Tony had seen was Doom vanishing into dust and darkness falling around him, Morgana’s voice loud in his ears as she wove her magic.. 

Was that real? Was it what had happened?

Paranoid now, he picked up the metal piece and stuffed it into one of the drawers. He could find a better place to hide it later.

On his way to the door, he passed the mirror and realized he was wearing a fresh shirt. 

Someone had dressed him.

He looked down at himself. Whoever had done it had left it at the shirt. His own had admittedly suffered quite a bit during his weeks in Camelot. But someone had dressed him –– undressing him in the process. Someone had had a chance to look at his mechanical heart while he’d been out.

Like the syringe, this brought up bad memories. 

Straightening his shoulders, he walked out of the room, shoving the door to the side cautiously. 

The corridor looked much like he remembered it too. There was the picture of his father on side of the wall and one of the whole family together on the other. His mother was holding him in her arms and he was reaching up to her face.

He’d loved the picture when he was a child –– the only true memory of his mother.

The music was drifting down from the room he’d used as an office when he had to meet business partners in the mansion. He hadn’t done much of that and instead done most of his business from the rooms of Stark Industries.

Still on guard he pushed open the door to the office and found it completely unchanged too. An old radio there was running. He went right to it and changed the channel. Nothing. It made a strange sound and died.

He looked at it. 

It wasn’t his.

Someone else had placed it here.

He studied it with a sense of foreboding and looked down the corridors into both directions before he walked towards the stairs. “Jarvis?” he called.

The eerie silence of the Mansion was putting him on edge, even more than the music had done until he’d turned it off. 

Downstairs was where things got uncanny. 

Nothing here looked like he remembered.

The floor plan was the same, but the furniture, the tapestries –– everything had changed. The dread that had tried to claw its way into his heart was succeeding. He felt paralyzed suddenly, but forced himself to look up the stairs again, ground himself in the knowledge that this was his house.

But the question all of this posed was, how long had he been gone?

He’d been in Camelot for only a few weeks. He’d fought Doom over his attempt to use Excalibur in his time machine to bring the dictator back to their own time using Tony’s technology and expertise, but once again trying to betray him.

That was what happened.

But why did he feel that he’d spend months in a deep sleep? Why were his bones tired and his muscles weak? Why did he have distant memories of dreams he couldn’t have dreamed? Of music he’d never heard and of wars he couldn’t have fought in? 

And what had become of Arthur?

The last thing Tony remembered was the black knight, Mordred, wounding him, Doom standing proudly at his side, mocking Tony for his unwillingness to take Excalibur to open them a gateway home.

Had he been witness to the death of the legendary king?

Dizziness beset him, but he shook it off. He was Tony Stark and in the here and now there were too many unknown variables for him to show a moment of weakness or hesitation. He had to find out what was going on, where he was and who held him here.

With new determination he strode to the kitchen. 

To his astonishment it had turned into a wonderfully bright room and the design of cupboards and devices was perhaps the most significantly changed from anything he’d seen here so far. 

He backed out, not wanting to keep himself with inspecting just one room, but with finding clues to where he was. 

The big gala room had turned into a living room. But nothing here looked like furniture he’d owned at any point in time. The sofa looked huge in the middle of the room, as if it was meant to hold a whole party of people. A huge flat back screen caught his eye, placed where he’d expected a bulky television set. He walked around it twice, studied the outline, the cables, the connections. There were no buttons at all on the device he could see, just a tiny red light in the corner. Before it sat a tiny black box that also shone a tiny bright light. 

He circled the set up.

As far as he could tell, it was a television set. He let his fingers run across it, marveling at the flatness and size of the screen. He was a second away from just taking it apart to see how it worked.

“Hey.”

He nearly jumped out of his skin.

Captain America stood in the door, arms folded. How long had he been watching Tony without him noticing?

“Careful, I suppose you know I have a weak heart,” Tony said with more bravado than he was feeling.

“Nothing weak about you,” Captain America quipped back and gave him a once over. “You’re not supposed to be up yet. Must have burned through the sedative real fast.”

“Where am I?”

“Don’t you recognize it?” The Captain watched him, staying in the doorway as if he wasn’t sure coming closer was a good idea.

Tony tried to smile, going for nonchalance though he was feeling threatened. “It looks like the mansion I grew up in, lived in.”

“It is.”

“It is and it isn’t.”

The corner of Captain America’s lips curled into a wry half-smile. “We wanted to break it to you gently.”

“What?” he asked. “What exactly is there you need to break to me gently? Where am I?”

“You’re in New York City. Stark Mansion. Although people call it Avengers Mansion now.”

“Now?” The dread was there again, because he knew the answer, had perhaps known from the moment he’d woken in the unfamiliar plane. 

“Now. The year 2019.”

Although Tony had seen it coming, hearing the actual year still felt like a Hydra drone had clocked him right in the jaw. He took a step back, feeling his heart race. “Great,” he said, “marvelous. Wrong year again.”

“Again?”

“See,” he said and sank down onto the sofa, “I was stuck in 347 for a few weeks. At least that’s the year I think I was stuck in. The chronicles were shoddy...”

“A few weeks?” Captain America stepped closer, moved around the sofa and took a seat in the arm chair.

“And then what? I remember Doom and Morgana and that cryptic bastard Merlin said something about going into the cave to safeguard Excalibur…” 

Was he babbling?

He was babbling.

He took a deep breath and shut his mouth before more words could escape him. 

“We never knew what exactly happened to Tony Stark. Will you tell me?”

“I don’t even know who you are.”

The man held out his hand. “I’m Captain America, and if you don’t want to tell me anything, that’s fine too. I can tell you what happened to the world since 1945.”

Tony regarded the man for a long moment. “You always wear that cowl?”

“I have to protect my secrets,” the man said. “I do live here now. When I’m with the Avengers.”

“The people on the plane?”

“Yes, you’ll meet them. We understand this is your house.”

“How did it become your… club house?”

“The Stark Foundation gave it to us. They are funding us.”

Tony was trying to keep up with the information that kept coming. But days ago in his memory he had been stuck in Camelot hoping to build a time machine that would bring him back to 1945, to his friends and family –– and now what?

He swallowed hard, tried to not give in to the sudden anguish he was feeling.

“Everyone I knew, they’re dead now, aren’t they?” 

“Pepper is alive. She’s the coolest centenarian I know.”

“Coolest?” Tony asked, confused by the vernacular as if he was still among knights. “She’s alive?”

Cap nodded. “She’s very old and gets tired easily. Has her mind together. Her kids run the family business. That is, your business.”

“Kids?” He let it sink in. There were a million questions he wanted to ask. What had become of Jim and Jarvis? How had Pepper fared and what had become of the company? 

But before Captain America could give him an insight on Pepper’s family life after the war, Tony asked the most important question: “Hydra?”

“The allies won the war,” Captain America said softly, “but Hydra went underground. They survived. All these years they were manipulating governments, terrorizing whole countries without anyone knowing the connection.”

“They still exist?” Somehow it felt like this was on Tony.

“A new Zemo is out there, providing the Red Skull with weapons and technology.”

Tony bit his lip hard. 

“For a while our foremost intelligence agency thought it was you under that mask.”

He shook his head. 

“I promised them I’d return, that it was only a minor mission.” Tony buried his face in his hands.

Captain America nodded. “You’re here now. You got back.”

“70 years too late.” He let his head hang in shame. The thought of Jarvis broke his heart. What had he felt when he thought Tony must have died?/ 

_I failed them_ , he thought. _I saved them from Doom and Hydra and the harm they would have done with a time machine, but I let them down._

“Stark? Tony?”

Slowly, Tony sat up. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me everything you know and I will tell you what happened to me.”

Captain America nodded, but got to his feet. He held out a hand to Tony. thinking they were sealing a deal, Tony took it, about to shake it, but Captain America pulled him to his feet easily, like someone who was confident in their strength. 

Tony eyed him up with new regard.

“Let’s talk in the kitchen,” Steve suggested. “You must be starving.”

The man led the way and Tony followed him with his eyes before he started into a trot. “Do you live your whole life in uniform and mask?”

Grinning back at him over his shoulder, Captain America said: “You of all people will understand the advantage of presenting a good mystery.”

For the first time since waking up, Tony felt like he could smile; an exhausted, overwhelmed smile, but a smile.

* * *

Pepper send him a Marvels issue from 1976 the next day with a note: “Welcome back, Tony. We knew it wasn’t the end of your adventure.”

The issue was an anniversary re-edition of different stories, all of which had been published after his time. The title read: “The Return of Tony Stark.”

He smiled wanly at the sentiment. 

Around lunch time James Rhodes Jr. showed up, looking like the spitting image of his father. Tony made him tell stories of his father for a while, then asked about Pepper. “She always believed you’d come back one day.”

“You’re leading the company.”

“It’s Stark International now,” James replied politely. “Would you be interested in reclaiming your place in the company?”

“Right now,” Tony admitted, “I have no idea what I want. In Camelot at least I knew I needed to find a way to stop Doom, to get back home. Here? My not returning home is already a fact.”

“You’re looking at it the wrong way, Tony.” The voice drifting over from the door was familiar now. “You’re home. You’ve arrived. Now you can decide what to do with the rest of your life.” 

“Thank you, Captain,” Tony said and tried to smile. So far Captain America had been the only Avenger he’d seen around the Mansion, but his blue-cowled friend had assured him the others were happy with him staying in their headquarter and wanted to know all about him and what had happened to him. 

Tony had spent part of the night reading up on news articles on all of the Avengers. He was catching up with the technology of a world that had moved on without him. 

“Let’s go.” James gestured to the stairs.

Tony nodded. He wasn’t used to going along with other people organizing his life around him, but he reminded himself that he’d survived in the 4th century; he could brave the future. What kind of futurist would he be if he couldn’t?

The company had changed considerably. It was a vast plant complex in New Jersey. James handed him all the floor plans readily. Tony wondered what the man, who was slightly older than Tony –– if you disregarded that Tony was now probably 1600 years old if you were counting linearly –– but also his best friends’ _son_ , was thinking about all of this.

“I grew up on Marvels stories,” James explained during the limousine ride. “Dad always loved to take us out hiking and tell us all about your survival in the jungle.”

Tony smiled. “Jim was the best friend I had. He saved my life countless times.”

“You gave him War Machine. It made his Air Force career.”

“He’s… He was the best person to have at your back when you were out there. He knew everything about survival, the plants and animals that surrounded us. And he was a hell of a pilot. I’m not surprised your parents were successful in life.”

James smiled. 

“SHIELD? Why did they call it SHIELD?”

“It’s a terrible acronym. But the idea was that they would be the shield against war mongers and terrorists, against the threats that a free society faced.”

“Is Captain America part of that?”

He had only known the man for a day or so, but Captain America was already a real friend. Used to not trusting easily, Tony was surprised how easily it had been to trust Cap with his own story. The man had received him so easily, listened while Tony had pieced together what had happened to himself. He had also suggested they meet someone called Dr. Strange to make sure there were no lingering effects from the magic that had turned him into stone for centuries.

“He was,” James said. “He has his own head though, that one. He was pulled in when Hydra took over half of the States in a surprise coup d’etat.”

“He mentioned it –– and gave me a book to read about it. Didn’t like talking about his own role in all of it.”

“That’s Captain America.”

“How could Hydra get into a position to rip the country apart? It seems so incredible that they would attack us here in the homeland. But there's no clear front line anymore.”

James shrugged. “It was the worst of times,” he said gravely. 

They arrived at the New York offices of Stark International and the driver opened the doors for them. 

Tony felt strange, in his newly bought shirt and jacket. He knew he still looked out of place. And he couldn’t stop following people with his eyes. Fashion, hairdos –– it had all changed dramatically. To him it was as if he’d found his way into a new culture, and it was hard to remember that he wasn’t on an anthropological excursion. In the entrance hall they were greeted by a young secretary named Amanda who was eager to give Tony an entry badge and a short run down of how things worked. People couldn’t just enter the building anymore, they needed a badge that allowed them to enter certain floors via the elevator.

It was futuristic and yet straightforward. Tony took it in stride but made a mental note to look into how exactly the scanners worked. 

“This is the cafeteria if you need anything,” James gestured. 

Surprised the company had a place like this for employees nowadays, Tony looked up. Two men were greeting each other in front of the door. They exchanged kisses and then walked into the cafeteria holding hands. 

“That’s Donald and Frank from accounting,” James said when he saw where Tony was looking. He seemed to be an organizational genius like Pepper and took pride in knowing his employees by name. “They’re getting married next month.”

Startled, Tony stopped and then grinned. “That’s a thing now?”

James paused to grin back, relief only half-disguised when he realized Tony was taking this in stride too.

“Equal marriage rights? Not everywhere yet. But there’s nothing illegal about being in love with whoever you want here. As long as they’re of age.”

His mood brightened. He hadn’t thought about it too much yet, how difficult it must have been for Pepper and Jim during times when even their marriage must have been a matter of contention to some people. It was so like them that they had created a happy life for themselves against all odds.

Proud of what they had achieved, Tony walked into the next office with a bright smile.

There she was.

He recognized her immediately, despite the slightly hunched back, despite the cane, the gray hair gathered in a bun. Even at her age, she stood on her own two feet, if somewhat shakily. 

“Tony,” she said and smiled. There were tears in her green eyes.

He didn’t wait for James to say a word, he stepped past him and right towards his mother, gathered her in his arms. “Hey, Pep. I’m so sorry I’m late,” he said and nearly choked on the words.

She hugged back with surprising strength, leaning into him.

Her son kept quiet while the two of them stood together, both teary eyed and emotional. 

She sobbed and then weakly hit him in the chest. “You idiot,” she said. “You missed our wedding and peace and…”

“I’m sorry,” he said and wasn’t embarrassed to find tears rolling down his cheeks. 

Being in a house with futuristic furniture and devices was one thing. Holding someone he’d known so well in his arms and realizing this frail old lady was really Pepper Potts, chronicler of his adventures and an adventuress in her own right, was something else entirely. It had become terribly real.

2019.

This was his life now.

70 years of life, advancement and developments that had passed him by.

“Sit down,” Pepper gushed. “Let us show you what we did with your legacy.”

He sat in the offered chair and watched James help his mother sit in a wheelchair. 

“You don’t have to show me,” Tony said. “It’s yours.”

“It still has your name on it and we kept it in shape for you.” Pepper gestured to a young man to bring them refreshments and then leaned back and let her son talk.

“We set up the Stark Foundation for you,” James said, “Mother always thought one day you might need it. It will provide for all your needs. The mansion is part of its assets and right now the Avengers are using it. We were wondering what you want to do about the company.”

“You should take your place here.”

He looked at Pepper, startled. “Pepper,” he said. “I’m an adventurer and engineer from the ‘40s. What do I have to offer Stark International?”

“You are _Tony Stark_ ,” Pepper said. “After you’ve worked your way out of the shellshock you’ll see. But I don’t have years and years to wait for you to decide, Tony. I want my affairs settled.”

Her gaze was as clear as he remembered it. Her son grinned sadly. He had already buried his father.

“Can I think about it?”

“Of course,” Pepper said and then gave him a shaky smile. “Of course. There’s someone else we want you to meet.”

The door opened and a broad shouldered man about Tony’s age stepped through. The newcomer smiled at Pepper. “Mrs. Rhodes, how are you?”

“Steve, gosh, quit that. Sit down. Look at this handsome man, Tony. He and I, we can’t wait to hear more about Camelot and time travel. Tell us.”

“Steve Rogers,” the man introduced himself and shook Tony’s hand. “I’m a big fan, Mr. Stark. I would never have thought I’d be lucky enough to meet you, of course. And I have so many questions. I don’t know where to start.”

Shellshocked, Pepper had called his state, and only now, when he was smiling at the enthusiastic man before him, feeling an emotional distance and yet a warm tingling feeling that wanted to break through, did he understand how right Pepper had been from the start.

“He’s one of the current Marvels creators and the unofficial chronicler of the Avengers adventures.”

“Good to meet you,” he said and was a little touched by the excitement that glowed from Rogers face. “I owe Pepper a story. So if you want to hear it too…”

“Yes, please,” Rogers blurted and blushed slightly, when he realized it.

Tony took Peppers hand in his and started: “You still have the notebook?”

“I do,” she said. 

“It may surprise you to know who sent it to us…” he began.

They spent hours in that office. He and Pepper laughed and cried together, exchanging their stories.

Rogers made a few notes, but for the most part had listened enraptured by what they had to tell. He asked a couple of questions, but mainly remained a quiet presence in their reunion.

When Tony came to the part in the story where one of Arthur’s knights fought him in a duel and damaged the armor badly enough that one of the gauntlets had to be replaced, Rogers gasped.

Tony threw him an amused glance.

“We found the gauntlet,” Pepper explained. “We could never make heads or tails of it.”

“I gave it to young Gawain as his prize. Arthur was amused and my place among his ranks was secured. For the two weeks that it lasted anyway.” Tony tried to grin. The memory was overwhelming, as overwhelming as sitting here with his friend and realizing how much time had passed. “Had to build a new one.”

“Steve should pick you up tomorrow,” Pepper said softly. “Show you the city. Would you do that for me, Steve? I wish I could, but these legs have had all the adventures they can. I’m not able to run around with you anymore. But, Steve –– Steve is young enough to keep up with you.”

How did you deny someone like Pepper? He had never been good at it. 

“Give me time to settle in,” he said to Rogers, “but then I could use a guide to this city. It’s changed so much. I barely recognize Manhattan.”

Steve smiled. A melody rang up from his jacket pocket that same moment and his face fell. “I’m sorry. That’s important.”

He pulled one of the flat screen phones from his pocket that Tony had already read up on and got up to take his call outside the room.

“Computers,” Tony said, “who would have thought how fast we’d advance them.”

“Catching up?”

“I haven’t even scratched the surface yet.” He gave Pepper a slightly pained smile.

“You will, Tony. You’ll find something to do. And if you don’t want to be the genius inventor or the man fighting Hydra –– leave it to the Avengers. They’re doing a good job of it.”

“I heard,” he said and grinned. “I met them. Swell group of heroes.”

“Nobody says swell anymore, Tony,” Pepper said and winked. “You could settle down. Live the life you always wanted to.”

He squeezed her fingers. “I’ll think about it.”

What he thought was: “I _had_ the life I always wanted. What do I do with it now? It’s not like I’m still needed.”

James’ driver returned him to the mansion later, and Tony felt as exhausted as he had the first day. He had a keyring in his pocket and the door let him through into his home of old, but even standing in the hallway he felt like he didn’t belong. 

In his room he just threw the jacket into the bed, sat a moment in front of the window, pondering his options. Then he walked the hallways, wondering when exactly the Avengers were around. If he would be stuck here all alone for most of the time, he’d go crazy before long.

He found his way into the library where for years he had collected books on history and legends, on the mysteries of the world and technology. Had Jarvis added to it in the years after Tony had vanished?

He peruse the shelves and found different books on computing and electronics.

“Back from you meeting? How’s Mrs. Rhodes?” 

Again Captain America had come to find him. Tony set his book aside and smiled.

“Feisty for her age.”

“That she is,” the man agreed. Then he looked at Tony’s choice of books. “Has someone shown you to the Avengers levels yet? You could use the computer there to catch up?”

“Does it have access to knowledge?”

“Any device that has access to the Internet can give you more than you bargained for. We should get you a phone.”

Tony nodded. He had eyed the devices with envy today. “Get me two,” he said and grinned. “I think I need to look at one from the inside.”

Captain America chuckled. “How are you doing?”   
So far nobody had asked him that with as much sincerity. Everyone seemed to think he was happy to be alive and there wasn’t much else to consider.

“Overwhelmed, exhausted. I never quite fit in with society, never quite did what was expected of me –– but I’ve never felt so displaced. Not even in Camelot. At least I had something to do then, something I needed to do. Now I’m not sure what’s next. I’m no longer needed.”

“You’re you,” Captain America said softly and took a chair beside him. “That’s a lot. And no reason to mope around the mansion.”

“I’m not moping,” Tony disagreed. Then he pondered the events of the day and his arrival in this new area and asked: “What did you Avengers do with my armor?”

Captain America blinked, taken by surprise perhaps. “It’s down in the vaults. Do you want it? We haven’t touched it. Just stored it away. We weren’t sure of its capabilities and thought it better not to leave it behind. Who knows what someone else could still scavenge from it.”

“Good thinking,” Tony agreed. “Can you show me?”

“Sure, if you do something for me.” 

“All right, whatever you think a relic from the past can do for you.”

“Oh, Mr. Stark, you of all people should know that there are relics that can change the world.”

It was his turn to be startled. Then he laughed. “True enough. What is it you want me to do?”

“Show me how it works. The armor. Show me what it looked like when Iron Man did battle.”

His eyes widened. Then he grinned. “It’ll be my pleasure, Captain.”

Without wasting time, Cap took Tony down to the vault where the Avengers had stored the Iron Man armor. Stark International had equipped the lower levels to fit the needs of superhero team.

“Is this what it’s like at SHIELD?”

“It was inspired by SHIELD. The secret entrances and the eye scanner, that’s right out of an agent's handbook.”

“Intelligence guys always have their toys. Must have started during the war, huh? Got used to it, never stopped.”

“Secrecy can mean the difference between life and death, but I’m a simple guy,” Captain America told him and smirked. “I prefer some things to be upfront.”

“That why you sit around the library and kitchen wearing a cowl?”

“It’s for both your protection and mine,” he said. “Don’t take it personal. Some of the other Avengers will be equally uptight about their civilian identities.”

“I know the drill,” Tony said and he wasn’t put off by any of this. He’d worked with informants and agents across Europe who had never known his name and he’d worked with people he’d never met face to face. In just a few days he had come to trust this man who ran around in a flag-colored uniform.

Was it his conviction? Was it the interest he had taken in Tony’s well being?

Tony couldn’t say.

He was acting on a gut feeling, and he had learned to trust his gut. It had saved him countless times.

They stepped past a conference table that looked right out of a science fiction novel and then past a huge room that was lined with equipment. On the other side there was a lab and beyond that, finally, the vault.

With a swipe of a card and a spoken authorization code, Captain America opened the crate that held the armor.

Tony was still marvelling at the computerized voice that informed them: “Voice authorization: Captain America confirmed.” He’d been able to give the few systems he was running in the armor a voice that was very limited and worked more like a simple announcer. But the underlying idea was the same: a system of algorithms. That much he understood from studying codebreaking and computing during the war. And Stark Industries had been advanced in micro-electronics at an early stage –– the idea that you could miniaturize and make these systems smaller and smaller wasn’t surprising. The scope –– going from machines that filled a room and were barely able to solve advanced mathematics, to this — was dizzying.

Tony wanted to understand it, know more, take it apart.

The Iron Man stood in front of him.

“Hey,” Tony said and patted the armor. Seeing it was like meeting a trusted friend.

“Get in,” Captain America suggested. “I’ll put you through the paces in our training room.”

“Through my paces?”

“We can train,” Captain America suggested with a challenging undertone. “If you think you can hold your own against a flag man with a shield.”

“That’s your weapon?” He had wondered about the round shield the man was carrying but hadn’t dared to ask.

“Only weapon I need.”

Tony shrugged and made up his mind. “Why not? It’s not like I have a busy schedule.” 

He was as curious about what Captain America could do as Cap was about the armor. And it would be a good moment to test the armor, see if it still worked or had suffered through it centruies of petrification. 

“Cap? Are you down there?”

It was a voice he’d heard before.

“Ant-Man? We’re down here. I have Tony Stark with me.”

“Tony Stark?” A little yellow and black streak whizzed past Tony’s nose and took the form of a full grown woman beside Cap. “Hi! How are you doing?”

Gaping, Tony needed a moment before he could answer. “So I didn’t imagine the size changing. I was so out of it, I wasn’t sure.”

“Wasp,” the woman said, “also Wasp-sized when needed. You can call me Janet or Jan.”

“Hi, Janet or Wasp. And Ant-Man, I remember that,” Tony said and laughed. She didn’t seem to mind giving away her name. She also wore no mask.

The man came around the corner, apparently not among the people with a strict secret identity policy as he wasn’t wearing his strange metal helmet. He nodded towards Tony.

“Cap,” we said, “we have another lead on Hulk. I’ll check into it and let you know.”

“Please, Hank, thank you. Call in Thor if we need to go.”

The man nodded but made no move to go. He was too busy watching Tony. “What are you guys up to?”

“Tony’s going to show me how the armor works.”

“And Captain America wants to take me through my paces.”

Suddenly Tony was looking forward to this. He doubted anyone would be impressed by his bulky armor, but it would still be good to feel a little like himself again.

“Let get started then.”

He opened the armor and hoisted himself in.

Hank watched him. “That’s sophisticated for something you built 70 years ago.”

The astonishment was balm for Tony’s overwhelmed soul. He hadn’t felt like Tony Stark since he’d woken; now for the first time it felt right.

He snapped the mask down, hooked up the energy cells to his heart and waited for the systems to start up. The joints moved with a hydraulic hiss.

“Lead the way,” he told Cap and Captain America did so with a grin. He waved him into the big room that was full with equipment it stretched out into different directions leaving a large place where the heroes could fight or train.

“Can we do damage to the mansion from here?”

“Not when the systems are engaged,” Jan explained.

She pressed a few buttons on a wall panel while Captain America led him into the middle of the room. It felt good to be moving the armor and he noticed the impressed looks of all present Avengers.

Then without warning a shield came flying at his facemask. He caught it, but stumbled back with the surprising force of it.

“Faster than it looks,” Cap chuckled.

“Be careful, Iron Man,” Hank warned. “He’s a drill master.”

Cap laughed and Tony sped up his movements, noticed that the gauntlet he hadn’t properly fixed since the times of Camelot would be a hindrance but fired an experimental blast to see Cap dart out of the way and still catch his shield when Iron Man threw it back his way.

“You’re good,” Tony said, honestly impressed.

“Ready for a real fight?”

It was his turn to laugh. He was ready to pull all registers here just to show he could still do it.

The friendly fight was fun. Captain America’s shield turned out to be a formidable weapon that could have put laser cannons to shame. The man threw it with superhuman precision and used it as an extension of his body in a way that made Tony feel cornered, even when facing only one person. Iron Man did get the upper hand the moment he focused on keeping the shield out of Cap’s hands.

Cap wasn’t easily outwitted though.

“I enjoyed this,” Tony said after Cap had toppled him over. “Let’s do it again.”

“I’ll put you on the mat whenever you ask me to,” Cap promised and helped him sit up and then climb out of the armor.

* * *

After that first time back in the suit, the Avengers had promised him a joint rematch and let him take his armor out of the vault.

The first night he let it stand by his bedroom door like a metal bodyguard.

But his fingers itched to get to work.

Sooner or later he realized he would need help with calibrating his mechanical heart, and they had none of the tools available. He would have to build them up from scratch and without Jarvis there to help him.

For two days he buried himself in the library, using an old laptop that James gave him. He got bored with it by the end of the week and took it apart to scrap it. 

“You learn fast,” Hank said Tony’s days at the mansion stretched into weeks.

It started with Cap taking him downstairs –– and he sounded honestly impressed –– when he found Tony setting up a computer from parts he’d scavenged from other laptops.

“It’s fun and it’s not like I have much to do.”

He spent the rest of the afternoon building himself a small compartment he could hide the Excalibur shard in. Then he went through the armor’s inlays pockets looking for the wooden scabbard that he’d taken from the sanctum in Wales before his life had been turned upside down.

When he put the two together they fit perfectly, the shining blade and the rotting scabbard. A humming sound emitted from the blade, content and calming, and he swore he could feel it warm to the touch.

Afraid of drawing too much attention to it, he pulled the sword shard from the piece of scabbard and put them separately into the compartment before sliding it into one of the armor’s gauntlets.

With his new credit card he ordered himself a new computer and a tablet, startling Cap when the postman rang their doorbell with his purchase. After setting up an email address, he also wrote Pepper about his day and let James know he would like to take up his offer of getting his own Stark Phone. He wanted to learn how to use one as quickly as possible.

“Do people need all this junk on it?” he asked when he was trying the phone out during breakfast and Janet and Cap found him eating cereal while setting it up.

“Need? No, not all of it. You can decide what you need,” Janet explained. She gave him a quick rundown of how he could delete and install applications. “Want me to take you shopping, handsome? You can’t keep going around in those 40s shirts.”

“The shirts are fine,” Tony said. He’d been taking them from his own things in the bedroom. “But I wouldn’t mind blending in better.”

After three days of watching tutorials and science videos online, he purchased what he needed for his new workplace.

He started with tools and workbench, turning his old makeshift office into an impromptu workshop where he could work on Iron Man.

By week four Janet had forced him out of the house to get a range of new clothes and a new haircut. Tony came back with all sorts of parts to fiddle with.

Captain America looked in on him much later, after the Avengers had returned from a mission. From what Tony had gathered they were looking for a lost teammate named Hulk. “Want to go a few rounds? I want to introduce you to Thor.”

“Thor?” His first thought was of a Nazi project he’d sabotaged years ago.

“Our very own thunder god. You haven’t met him yet. When you woke on the jet he was in the pilot seat.”

“Oh,” he said. “Right! I saw his picture!”

“You’re catching up fast. Have you decided what you want to do yet?”

Tony shook his head. “For years I looked for something that would save me, then I did and my new mission became fighting Hydra. The truth is I have no idea what else to do –– and the age of exploration is over, or so the Internet tells me.”

“Is it?” Cap asked and grinned. “With aliens visiting our planet all the time, maybe we should turn the tables finally. We can start with Thor. He’s from Asgard and it’s in outer space, not legends.”

The talk of aliens reminded Tony of the sad truth that humanity had made it to the moon and Tony hadn’t been there to see it.

“I’ll be down momentarily.”

He gave Iron Man a rueful glance.

With every training session it became more apparent that Iron Man was obsolete.

But Tony Stark had a chance to find a purpose in life.

Perhaps.

It was Jan who told him: “Look at you. When you do clean up, you clean up nicely. Have you tried to go out a bit? Meet new people?”

“I’m not even sure I’m a legal citizen yet. And I do go out. I met up with Pepper just last week.”

Impulsively she threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly and painting herself even more as the most affectionate and open person on this team. She was very different from the people he had worked with during the war, but that with everything the Avengers were up against –– and Tony only needed to know about HYDRA and the danger the organization had posed to this country and world security to understand it –– it was a marvel that she could hold onto her vivacious nature.

“You need to go out,” Janet told him earnestly. “I mean it. I know it’s a strange world out there, but one day you’ll have to meet it head on.”

“He will,” Captain America said. He was sitting on the living room sofa in his ever present uniform, watching the news. “He’s Tony Stark. He can be anything he wants.”

“Of course, he can,” Janet agreed and kissed Tony on the cheek. “And as soon as he makes up his mind I’ll be ready with lots of ladies to introduce him to.” She winked and shrank down to flutter from the room.

Tony laughed. “She didn’t read many Tony Stark Adventures.”

“She read one or two of the comics. Not that those have much of your real adventures. They certainly never featured Gialetta Nefaria.”

“I’m fine with that,” Tony said. “For a time I wished I could forget all about her.”

Captain America peeled his gaze away from the news. He looked concerned about something, although with the cowl it was always hard to tell. “Did you love her?”

“Yes,” Tony said. “I knew she wasn’t straight with me, but I didn’t foresee her becoming the villain of that story.”

“Maybe you should go out. You’re hiding,” Cap suggested. 

It stung. It stung because it was the truth and Tony knew it too.

“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted. “Pepper would like to see me settle into a life with the Stark Foundation or the company. But I miss it. The other life. The adventures. I started doing it because I was searching for a cure for my heart, Cap, but it became part of who I am.”

“You’re a hero,” Captain America said softly but with the conviction that could give men the right motivation if you led them into battle.

“I don’t know who told you that,” Tony said, “but that’s always been an exaggeration.”

“I don’t think so,” Captain America told him. “You’re Iron Man. You fought Hydra and Doom and you went back in time and fought with the Knights of the Round Table –– and now you’re here working on catching up. How many people can do that?”

“I have to tell you,” Tony said, smiling at Cap’s earnest speech, “there was no table, round or otherwise.”

Captain America laughed. “Who else could tell me that?”

“Doom,” Tony deadpanned but grinned then, admitting Steve’s point. His life, even now when he wasn’t sure he’d ever find a place in the greater scheme of things again, was an oddity.

* * *

The Avengers followed more leads on their missing friend. Tony felt the burning need to help every time he saw Janet’s face cloud with worry or Cap’s jaw set in a way that spoke volumes about the trouble they were facing.

“I think I’d like to go to the jungle for a while,” he admitted to James when he visited him for a meeting at the New York offices of Stark International. “I’d feel more at home there than I feel at home here. I there no epiditon I could join?”

“Ah,” James said and sounded lie the patient father listening to the impatience of youth, “mother said you’d get bored sooner or later.”

“Of course, she would say that.” He had visited her twice during the last week. She hadn’t been feeling well. It scared him that she was old and frail. After arriving home, how was he going to deal with losing his only living friend? And not to Hydra, dragons, traps or gunfire? To old age.

Something with all his expertise and competence he couldn’t fight.

“You bought a car,” James suggested. “Take it around the country. Learn to live in this day and age. Find out what the country is all about.”

“You’ve heard? I do have a driver’s license, thanks to you. Since I’m now a legal citizen again, I thought I should buy something and make it official,” he said. It was a new freedom, but he still hadn’t found a true adventure. In fact, the streets around the city were no fun to navigate. 

A road trip sounded more appealing. Out there, where he could feel the wind in his hair and speed around lonely roads. 

“We pulled some strings,” James said. “With SHIELD mostly. But I warn you. My sister has questions for you and she’s going to come knocking on your door to get answers soon. She’s not going to be easy on you if she thinks she has something to gain. She takes her job very seriously.”

Tony nodded. “Everyone has plans for my future. For the first time in my life I have no mission to be on. I can at least hear her out.”

James shrugged. “It’s up to you, Tony. You can make your own choices. The paperwork is as good as done. The Foundation is yours. We will find alternate ways to support the Avengers.”

“I’m fine,” Tony said, “the Avengers should continue to be supported by the Foundation. So far they’ve done their best to support me.”

That James nodded, and sighed, speaking volumes.

He had worked out a plan to announce Tony’s return to Stark International, but Tony kept him at arm’s length. Returning to a company only to act as its face wasn’t his idea of good business. Although he _had_ been just that for a long while for Stark Industries during the war.

Tony left the office still unsure of where he wanted to go from here.

“Mr, Stark?”

Something about the voice was terribly familiar, but he couldn’t place the excitement, until he found the person the voice belonged to. What was the man’s name? Wasn’t he the Marvels chronicler?

Tony hadn’t exactly forgotten about him –– he was a handsome man –– but in the past weeks new knowledge had flooded in and new skills had been honed. A name hadn’t been on his priority list.

“Hello,” he said and visibly searched for the name until the young man saved him and provided it cheerfully: “Steve Rogers.”

“Rogers, right.”

“Steve, please.”

They shook hands.

“Call me Tony then,” he offered. “It’s not like anyone outside of an elect circle knows I am alive.”

Steve nodded and grinned. “That must be strange.”

“It has some advantages. No Hydra agent has come for me yet.”

“That must be a good feeling.”

If he was being honest, then actually no, it wasn’t. He missed it, the danger and excitement.

“Will you fight Hydra again?”

They found themselves walking side by side towards the exit.

“I honestly don’t know,” Tony answered. The more Tony learned about the Red Skull and the Hydra he had rebuilt the more he wanted to step out there and fight. But with a 75 year advantage for Red Skull, Iron Man was out of his league.

“Can I give you a tour now?”

“A tour?”

“I offered to take you around the city,” Steve reminded him with a smile.

He vaguely remembered agreeing. It had slipped his mind completely. “You did. I’m sorry, I’ve had so much on my mind lately.”

“It must be hard settling in?”

He shrugged. “It’s something,” he said and grinned.

Steve’s eyes widened before he grinned back. “It looks good, by the way.”

“Good?”

“New haircut, newly styled beard.”

“You like it?”

“You look handsome.”

“Thank you,” Tony said, wondering if this was how men talked to each other in this day and age. “You’re a handsome man, too.”

His comment startled Steve, brought an excited blush to his cheeks even. “Thank you,” he said, voice scratchy like a broken phonograph.

So, Tony thought, He had been flirting and he’d been surprised that Tony had flirted back. Interesting. He hadn’t had much interaction outside the close circle of Avengers and the Rhodes family.

“Where do you want to start?” Tony asked.

“Start?” Steve squeaked.

“With the tour? Where do you want to go?”

“Oh,” Steve said, “I know just the place.”

It wasn’t the last time he saw Steve Rogers. Something about him drew Tony in. And it wasn’t just that he knew everything about Marvels –– from details even Tony didn’t know about their first issue to “New Adventures” to the current line of short stories and comics. Steve asked questions about adventures and heroics, but he was also funny and smart.

They met for food. Steve introduced him a different restaurant every time.

They went to the Tony Stark exhibition together, Tony hiding his face under a Stark International cap.

He wore a Captain America T-shirt on a whim for their next lunch date.

“You like Captain America?”

“I live with him,” Tony pointed out. “At least sometimes. He comes and goes. But he’s been a good friend to me. I wish I knew his name. Feels weird to live with someone and not even know his face.”

“People look up to him, make him out larger than life. Every since he helped in the Hydra War.”

“You don’t sound impressed.”

“He does his best but he’s just a man,” Steve said softly.

“That makes him a true hero, doesn’t it.”

Steve’s eyes settled on him, startled. “He likes you too,” he finally said. “He said so.”

Tony blinked at him. “You talk about me?”

“I’m the Avengers chronicler. I do talk to the Avengers when I can catch up with them.”

“Why do you think he hides behind the cowl all the time?” Tony asked, blurting out the question that had been on his mind for far too long. 

“You care,” Steve realized. “You care about him.”

It startled Tony to feel the words echo in his heart. “I do,” he admitted. “He’s been kind to me.”

Sadness tinged Steve’s smile then and he looked away. Tony’s heart missed a beat when he saw it, took in the slumped shoulders ad the nervous way Steve folded his hands under the table, choosing his next words carefully — as if he wanted to say, _I was kind to you too_.

Jealousy? Disappointment? Crushed hopes? 

Tony thought he could read it all in Steve’s behavior but he couldn’t trust himself.

“From what little I know, I’d say Captain America has people to protect. Friends, family, I don’t know exactly. He lost someone during the war and he doesn’t want to risk losing anyone else.”

“Secrecy is important when you fight an enemy like Hydra,” Tony agreed, mourning all he’d lost in his brushes with them.

Steve gave him a sad smile and they changed the topic.

A month into regular meetings with, Tony had to admit he liked Steve. And it was obvious Steve liked him back. They were skirting around the issue and Tony had no idea how you breached the obvious subject in this day and age –– but the big question was, did he want to?

Was he ready to leave his shell for something normal?

A relationship?

Love?

And more to the point, was he just falling for the first nice person he’d met outside this house?

That evening James texted him. Stark International was funding an expedition to South America. Six months of jungle tracks and searching for artifacts. It was what he’d asked for, even though it sounded less exciting now than it had before.

In an attempt to take his mind off things, he turned the garage into a new workshop where he could do his metalwork. He worked there for three days straight, experimenting with new alloys and electronics before he was satisfied he could try something new.

“What are you doing out here?”

Once again Captain America had found him. He was looking him up and down with a neutral expression, but that was enough to make Tony feel self conscious. He was clad in black jeans, a dirty white muscle shirt and a leather apron.

On the workbench a new Iron Man mask was cooling.

“Adapting,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I’m trying to upgrade the armor. Not that I think I’ll need it…”

“You keep saying it as if your time as Iron Man is at an end.”

“70 years of technological advance, Cap. I’m just catching up.”

“Tony,” Captain America said earnestly, “if you want to be an Avenger, if you want to be Iron Man, there’s always going to be a place for you. We need men like you.”

“In your fight against Hydra?”

“Against whatever the world throws at us. There are too many threats.”

“Have you found your friend?” Tony vaguely remembered that there had been another lead.

“No, but we think AIM has him,” Steve said. “An organization that under Zemo’s influence has split from HYDRA. Advanced Idea Mechanics. They use science and technology to further their goals. We think they’re using technology to control Hulk. He can do a lot of damage –– and in turn that can mean a lot of damage to the team. Our independence might be short-lived.”

“That’s the kind of strategy I would expect from organizations like that.”

“See,” Cap told him. “We could use someone with your expertise.”

“I don’t know,” he said again. “But don’t worry, I’ll back you. You know the Stark Foundation is under my name again.”

“At some point it’ll come out, Tony. That you’re alive.”

He shrugged. He knew it would happen, but at the moment he was happy to postpone it.

“I’ve been thinking,” he explained. “I’ve never thought about settling down and I'm still not sure I’ll be any good at it, but perhaps now I’m at a crossroads. I asked James to find me an expedition to join and he has found one. I could go. Six months. Excavations in South America. It sounded nice before I read the full briefing and now... I met someone.”

“Someone?” Cap looked up and his voice became brittle.

“I met a decent fellow who takes me out to places. And it feels normal and sweet. Is it telling that normal feels uncanny? I’m afraid of normal, Cap. Even more of sweet. That’s not… I can’t do it. But what else can I do?”

“Do you like him?”

“I think so. We keep flirting, but nothing happens. I don’t know what you say these days to gauge if both parties are interested. What do you say?”

“Just ask,” Captain America suggested. He had relaxed a bit. “You deserve to be happy, Tony. With this person or another, but don’t think you can’t be Iron Man anymore because you’re not good enough. Every time we fight in the training room, you show us that you’re one of the best.”

“But the armor…”

Cap pointed at the new mask: “You’ll adapt it.”

The conversation stayed with Tony long after Captain America had gone.

Steve texted him twice the next day to set a new date for them to meet up. Tony still hadn’t found a name for what was going on between the two of them. Of all the people he’d met so far, Steve was the one who knew and understood the most about Tony’s original era. It was easy to connect with him and he was a tall, handsome chap.

And for all that Tony had been before, he was nobody now. Would Steve’s excitement to have met his hero survive when he acknowledged the fact?

Also, there was Captain America.

Cap had been the one who’d helped bring Tony into the here and now. He was a friend whenever Tony needed one –– and sometimes it felt like he was more than that.

In this overwhelming confusion of finding himself in a new century, was Tony reading signals where there was nothing?

And since when was he the type to sit around idly?

Were the stirring emotions a product of his boredom? Was acquiring knowledge no longer enough?

With renewed determination he sat down to calculate what he could do with the new alloy.

Then he remembered a piece of fabled metal he had kept out of sight since he’d woken up.

He owned a piece of Excalibur, the sword that had conducted some of Morgana’s power into Doom's second time machine and sent the dictator into oblivion. Merlin had called it unbreakable, even though Tony himself had broken it. Why had it broken? How had Morgana’s magic turned it into power?

For all Tony knew it could be a new energy source he could use without relying his heart –– and he hadn’t even looked into it yet. 

It was time that he remedied that oversight. Even though he had no plans to use the new armor, he wanted to know what he could do with all this new technology at his disposal.

Steve called him after Tony had cancelled a few meetings with him in a row.

“You can say it, if you don’t want to meet,” Steve said softly. “I’ll be disappointed. I like spending time with you but I’ll accept it.”

Tony sighed heavily. “I need a bit of time. I’m working on something. And perhaps afterwards I should go travel for a while, see how the world has changed and if there are still adventure to be had.”

“That sounds nice,” Steve said and a note of curiosity bled in. His excitement was always infectious. “I’ll be travelling too, Tony. Just for a while. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Perhaps we can sit down together and talk? There are some things we never talk about when we see each other. Perhaps we should talk about them.”

“Sounds good,” Tony lied. He hoped by the time Steve came back he would have figured out what he was looking for in his interactions with people.

“We’re leaving for a mission,” Captain America said when they saw each other down in the kitchen. “You’ll have to putter around here on your own for a while.”

“You’re going to save your friend?”

“Yeah, and SHIELD is moving against the Red Skull. Might be a very long time until you see me again.”

“Oh.” Tony wasn’t sure what to do that either. “I can’t rely on you to pull me from my moping forever, huh?”

“We’ll see about that. I’ll be back.”

It was an eerie promise to Tony. It was what he’d promised before, before he’d trapped himself in the past.

Without the Avengers, and Captain America especially, the mansion felt empty.

Tony worked for days, regretting suddenly that he couldn’t even call Steve who had gone on his vacation.

Because there was nobody to pull him from work, he nearly missed it when the mansion’s main telephone line rang.

“Hello?”

“Tony Stark?” a resolute female voice asked from the other end.

“Who’s speaking?”

He had a feeling he knew. He knew the cadence, and the calm.

“I am Director Rhodes of SHIELD. You may have heard of us. You’re a hard man to get in touch with.”

“Matter of opinion,” he said. “People can surprisingly walk to my front gate.”

“You wouldn’t want me to bring you that much attention.”

It sounded like a veiled threat of the kind that Tony had dealt with most of his adult life.

“You’re Jim’s kid,” he said softly. “You must value truth, so tell me what you want, Ms. Rhodes.”

He heard a soft chuckle from the end of the line. “My parents always told me that you were a force to be reckoned with.”

“That much I can guarantee,” he lied.

“Turn on your television.”

He hadn’t carried his tablet up from the workshop, so he fished the remote control from the sofa and put on the TV. Director Rhodes didn’t have to say any more to him. The moment she’d made the demand, he had known it would involve the Avengers and Hydra.

What he saw when he zapped to a news channel was worse than anything he could have imagined. There, lined up as frozen statues, were the Avengers. A video then started playing to display the moment it had happened. Thor and Captain America had walked towards a group of reporters in a populated area and then Janet and Hank had appeared on either side of them.

It looked like they had been about to speak to the press –– then out of the crowd a beam of red light had hit them, freezing them in their moment of unguardedness.

He could see it as clearly as anyone else.

“Stark?” Monica’s voice asked from the other end of the telephone line. “Seem familiar? If you’re like me I’d take that personal.”

He was about to say: “It has nothing to do with me.”

It would be a lie though. His mind was already racing, because Captain America was his friend and Jan had gone out of her way to be friendly with him.

“This isn’t magic,” he told Monica, while he watched the next repeat of what had happened closely. “It’s technology. A man from the crowd used a sort of gun to do it.”

Monica paused on the other end. Was she aware of that?

“We are looking into it,” she said curtly. “But if you are the hero my parents and Captain America believe in, then now would be a good time to show it.”

Even while she said it the picture on television switched. There was an AIM carrier approaching, ready to collect the Avengers in their currently frozen states.

“If it’s technology,” Tony muttered, “it can be reverse engineered. You must have people for that.”

“I do, and they are working on it,” she said. “I’m down a few superheroes.”

“Noted,” Tony answered and hang up.

He sat alone in the middle of the sofa, feeling small.

The question was no longer what Tony Stark should do with his life. The question was, what would Tony Stark do in a moment like this?

 _I’m outgunned and just one man,_ he thought, _but if AIM is with Zemo then perhaps he could cause enough of a distraction to be of use._

Course of action clear in his mind, he went to his upstairs workshop.

There in the corner stood the thing he’d been working on for weeks.

Now it was needed.

He pulled away the white cloth he’d used to cover the new armor with.

The new armor was red and gold.

The new alloys had dictated a flashy color scheme –– and if Tony was being honest, he hadn’t thought anyone but maybe the Avengers would get to see this one.

“Time for a test ride, Iron Man,” he muttered.

He used the remote control to open the armor and then let it close around himself. The enhanced sensors lit up the HUD with incoming data.

It made him feel pride at how far he had come in just a couple of months.

The repulsors were enough to get the armor off the ground without a jet turbine . The design was much sleeker, a much tighter fit; the new metal had allowed for a lighter build.

Flying the new armor was a dream.

Navigation was easier than with anything Tony had constructed before. He went in a flying arc right for the AIM carrier; the heavy artillery guns it was equipped with followed him, but he outmaneuvered their fire easily. He landed on top of the flying vehicle and gave himself a moment to scan the structure before he broke right in, letting himself fall into a corridor that for the moment was empty of guards.

“So far so good,” he said and propelled himself through the narrow space to reach the room where he knew his friends had been taken.

The new scanners made it so easy, even Tony was surprised.

He had to break through a line of guards aiming lasers guns at him, all of them clad in yellow suits of terrible design. He took their fire without problem.

“Armor integrity 100%,” his haphazardly programmed HUD announced when he’d taken at least five direct hits.

“Good,” he said with a smirk and returned the fire.

He was through the next second, crashing into the big lab-like room.

“Who the hell are you?” A man with one of the yellow masks shouted angrily.

“Iron Man.” Tony saluted. “We haven’t been introduced yet.”

“It’s true then?” A man stepped from the shadows; he was dressed in a long black leather coat and a black uniform beneath that reminded Tony of SS uniforms he’d seen too often. Above his collar waited the true horror. The man had red leathery skin that seemed to have molten around his bones to give him a skull-like face.

He spoke with a familiar accent, too.

“You know me?”

“I know the man who used to call himself Iron Man,” the man said.

“You did? From all I hear, he’s been long dead.”

“We were warned of his return.” Skull Face said. His accent was German, no doubt about it.

“You must be Red Skull? Working with Zemo again?”

“AIM has evolved. We have no need for a Zemo when we can have a whole ship full of them.” The Skull gestured around at the many people in beekeeper suits.

Tony shivered as he looked around. In this room alone were ten people. Had they all been infected with the Zemo formula?

Tony fired a shot towards the next door. Then he heard an inhuman growl from the other side. He dove past the shooting goons and wasn’t surprised to see the Avengers under a beam of light holding them frozen. Up close, they looked less statue-like. Was the beam needed to keep up the effect?

In a round cage to the left of the room a green figure roared.

“Hi,” Tony said, “you must be the Hulk everyone has been telling me about.”

He had read about him and the destruction he could bring, but right now he could use a little destructive power.

The room was filling with guards fast.

With the new enhanced repulsors he shot up towards the ceiling like a red and gold arrow only to dive down closer to the cage, then used a laser setting to cut through the cage’s door. It cut through the reinforced steel like butter. But the Hulk didn’t shoot from the cage as Iron Man had hoped.

Then Tony remembered: A control disc was keeping him at least mostly docile.

Guns were pointed up at him and the Red Skull stepped right in.

“You don’t want us to set the Hulk on your friends in their helpless state, surely?” he asked.

Tony scanned the room for the possibility of escape.

A get-away wouldn’t be easy.

“You said you knew Tony Stark?”

“I did,” Skull Face replied. “He’s the one who caused the explosion that gave me this face.”

 _That_ was impossible. “Pall, you must be at least a hundred if that’s true. And in that case maybe the face is an actual improvement?”

Tony fired another repulsor beam through the raining bullets, hitting the device above the Avengers. The light cone blinked out and all four Avengers sank to their knees, groaning.

“This is all too simple,” he said. He landed in front of Cap and helped him up. “I hope you people had a plan to get the control disc off, because otherwise we'll be fighting your friend over there soon.”

“Wasp! Ant-Man! Your turn,” Cap ordered; he himself was coming back to his feet, shielding himself from bullets with his shield. It was to his credit that he didn’t even hesitate. He simply sprang back into action. “I knew you’d come, Iron Man. I knew you’d have an ace up your sleeve.”

He knew Cap couldn’t see him grinning through the mask, but he couldn’t contain it. Since waking up he’d not once felt this in his element. Reveling in his new light and versatile armor, he hovered in the air, shielding Thor while he called down lightning to destroy the rest of the device that had held the Avengers.

“Tell me, are you him? Stark?” the Red Skull asked.

Tony landed in front of him, made sure that Captain America was close by to shield him, and snapped up the mask. “I am him,” he said. “Who are you? I’m sure I’d remember someone with such a lovely complexion.”

The Red Skull laughed, a terrible derisive laugh. “You don’t remember? My name used to be Schmidt.”

Tony nearly took a step back, but he forced himself forward and grabbed Red Skull by the collar. “That man is long dead.”

“Not easy to kill,” the Skull laughed and Tony felt himself pushed back by the blast of a canon. He had to let go, falling on his hands and knees with the impact.

“Armor integrity 98%” the armor informed him.

“That’s not bad at all,” he whispered.

“Energy levels at 100% capacity.”

“Goes to show that all it took was a new power source.”

Suddenly a green fist grabbed for Skull and Tony barely got out of the way.

“Controlling Hulk? Hulk no control.”

“No kiddin’,” Hank quipped from somewhere above Tony’s head.

“Let him,” Captain America ordered. “He has earned the right to avenge himself. Smash their carrier, friend, then join us at home?”

Hulk flared his nostrils before a fist struck through a wall panel, making the exposed cables sizzle with electricity. Lights flickered.

Tony offered an armored hand and he was gratified when Captain America took it without hesitation. Hulk smashed a hole into the ceiling, jumping out, and the rest of them followed, making their escape as swiftly as Iron Man had made his entry, leaving the AIM vessel in uncontrolled descent.

“What a day,” Tony chulked.

“Welcome to the Avengers, Iron Man,” Thor boomed and flew past him, swinging his hammer like a propeller.

Tony only needed one look at Steve’s grinning face to know that this was only the beginning.

He sat Cap down on the pier while they waited for SHIELD to arrive and clean up after aim.

“You did good, Tony. Still think the world can’t use the help of Iron Man?”

“An all new Iron Man? Yes, perhaps,” he agreed.

He was surprised when Captain America pulled him into a hug that he couldn’t even feel through the armor, though it made him warm and tingly anyway.

Tony tried to call Steve that very same evening to let him know his life had drastically changed. Nobody picked up the phone. Had he driven Steve away before they could at least find out if they were feeling the same?

“I didn’t even get to ask if we were dating,” Tony muttered.

“We were,” a cheerful voice said from the door. “I hoped we were. I wasn’t sure myself.”

When he looked up Steve wasn’t there, but Captain America was. His voice had sounded less serious –– more like Steve’s.

For a moment they stared at each other, then Steve pulled the cowl back and revealed his face. “I didn’t want to lead you on. I was on a SHIELD roster and didn’t want to cause you trouble, but then James and Pepper suggested I take you out and show you around. I wanted to tell you,” Steve said, hair tousled, “before I did this.”

He walked over to Tony and kissed him, just a soft and tentative touch, before he pulled away again.

“I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”

“Flattered,” Tony said. “Confused and flattered.”

He still had to sort out what he wanted and what he was feeling, but he was sure that wherever he was going from here, Captain America and Steve Rogers would be part of his plans.

A week after Iron Man’s reappearance, Stark International called for a press conference announcing the return of Tony Stark to the world and also his re-entry onto the company’s board.

“Legendary Hero Takes His Place in the Present,” Tony read out loud. “That must be my favorite headline yet.”

Steve sat on the other side of the breakfast table, smiling at him. “SHIELD will try and recruit you,” he warned. Tony hadn’t decided yet if that would be a good or bad thing. If his past adventures were an indication, though, he did his best work when he could make his own decisions.

“People,” Jan shouted from the next room, “there’s an intruder in the living room!”

She sounded startled enough to make Steve and Tony jump up as one to run to the living room.

Tony froze at the sight.

“Doom,” he whispered.

“Stark, it is good to see you have finally returned. A few years earlier than I predicted. You have a shard of Excalibur that’s rightfully mine. I will get it.”

“Shouldn’t you be in retirement by now?”

Doom laughed. “Time has no meaning to me. I went through the timestream when you and I broke Excalibur in two. I only had to pick the right times. It is the right time now, Stark. I will have the sword whole again.”

The image vanished, a remote projection –– nothing more.

“He’s going to be a nuisance,” Tony warned the rest of the Avengers. He had experience where Doom was concerned.

“He wants the piece of metal you held when you…?” Jan asked.

“Yes,” Tony grinned. “He won’t be amused when he finds out I melted it down and it’s part of my armor now.”

Steve and Jan looked at him incredulously before both of them started laughing.


End file.
